Loud Laughter

I've probably told the first part of this story before on my last blog, but not everyone here read that blog (I think?) and/or doesn't remember it.

So, loud laughter. If you've been to the temple you made that promise to avoid it. I never really knew what this meant--huh? Can't laugh loud? WTF is that all about?

Weird.

But you know, it's hard not to. Especially when you're in Sunday School and your husband is thumbing through the scriptures for some reason and starts to giggle. I nudged him. I'm easily embarrassed.

"Look," he whispered, offering his scriptures to me. Joshua 5:3

And Joshua made him sharp knives, and circumcised the children of Israel at the hill of the foreskins.

I BUSTED A GUT.

I don't know why this was so hilarious to us at the time--perhaps the lesson was especially boring that morning, or perhaps it was because Eric and I tend to have our minds in the gutter more often than most (it seems--am I wrong?) Not that our minds were in the gutter, so much, but "hill of the foreskins" just hit our funny bone.

We couldn't shut up. Front row. Everyone's looking at us, and we know it, but "hill of the foreskins" is an immensely funny phrase at the moment and it was going to take us a while to get over our fit.

Granted, not exactly a situation of "loud laughter" but irreverent nonetheless, being that we were in the middle of Gospel Doctrine learning about whatever regurgitated and repetitive nonsense Correlation had decided was doctrine that year.

It was fun. We would turn to that verse often throughout the following years. It wasn't always so funny, but it's a good memory. When we dared tell the story to others (this was in our active days), our recounting was generally met with quizzical but polite smiles and nervous laughter.

Foreskins, ha!

Fast forward about...oh, five years. We believe this took place the last time Eric and I entered a temple. Sacramento, California. I wasn't a big fan of this temple. Small, whatever. And you had to make an appointment. Laaaame. I'm loyal to Oakland. My first temple, where I was married, big and has a cafeteria and clothing rentals. Maybe not as shiny, but gorgeous.

Anyway.

So we took Eric's dad, sister, and BIL with us to the temple to do something or other. Endowment session, I think. We ended up being late, so we called to let them know. Nothing they could do, they said. We had a late appointment.

But wait! You have three priesthood members? Could you pretty plz do some sealing sessions?

We agreed. Once we arrived, we dressed ourselves in the weird getup and somehow ended up in the sealing room with an older man who acted as the sealer. I don't remember much about this day except that Eric broke into a random fit of giggles in the middle of the ordinances.

It was fucking hilarious, y'all. But I didn't think want to let on that I thought so at the time, being concerned about offending his family. Other than his sister being there, his fucking dad was there. He can be rather devout.

Instead of getting chastised, everyone else (except the sealer, and maybe his dad) started laughing too. The sealer didn't know what the hell to do.

People, it was priceless.

That said, on the way home Eric ran a red light at one of those camera intersections and we got BUSTED. I'm sure they think it was some sort of punishment for the irreverent way he acted in the temple. It sucked, for sure. Five hundred dollars hurts.

But the memory of the sealer is still funny. Like Eric said the other day, it could've been funnier if he would've chastised us. Mostly he just looked at us like this O_o and went about his business.


(Slightly off topic) another way to make a temple worker look at you like you've grown two heads: get your new name for your dead person, sit in the chapel, get really REALLY uncomfortable and then go give the name lady your proxy paper and say "I'm not doing this."

I'd like to know how often that happens.