My 17 year-old son had two minutes to share his thoughts about his dad yesterday during sacrament meeting. Anyone who knows my last born knows that he sees the world through the eyes of a much older, wiser person. And he has humor that spills out unexpectedly. We always share his sayings, and his friends like to record him without him knowing it — like in priests quorum when he is explaining his viewpoint.
Seth didn’t want to read his talk. He said, “I’d rather fumble a bit than read a script.” See that’s what I mean, he is not your stereotype teen. I wish I had recorded his two minutes, I enjoyed it that much. I see why his friends record him.
He got up and talked about the three stages:
- Blind admiration, when you put your dad on a pedestal — this is when you are a little child and you think your dad knows all.
- Being critical, seeing the flaws — as you become a teenager you realize he doesn’t have all the answers, it’s like you pull back the curtain and find out that he is not the great Wizard of OZ, he is just a man.
- Appreciating him as human being — more on the same level, closer to being an adult — he makes mistakes, as you do, but he is wise.
Seth then shared a quality that is unique to his father —
“He is a hard worker, not just in the professional sense. He works hard at whatever he is doing. For example, I would walk into his room and see him preparing for his Primary class and he would be pouring over his scriptures and have books all over, he would be grabbing props for his kids. He was like Gandalf. And my dad has taught Primary for 10 years, if anyone could have defaulted to just putting on a scripture cartoon dvd and calling it a lesson, he could have. But he puts his heart into everything he does.”
It was a great talk, and a great tribute to his dad.
Earlier that day, my husband had told me that it makes him a little nervous when his son is going to speak. I immediately turned to him and said, “you mean like the way I feel about you?” Everytime my husband gets up to share his testimony I get a little panicky — “uh oh, what’s he going to say?” You see people do not always understand him, and I think I had my last child to help me better understand the both of them. They have minds that think beyond the box. They are both dyslexic which has gifted them with perception unique to that kind of mind.
Of course, in the case of my husband, he has given me moments to squirm in my seat as well as moments of inspiration. In fact, when he was a new convert of only a few years, my brother-in-law played a nasty joke on him. It was during our younger years and my husband was wearing a nuclear freeze T-shirt when dear brother-in-law challenged him to wear it to church. He prepared his talk for sacrament meeting, and all seemed well until he came to the end of his talk and said that his brother-in-law had dared him — at which point he unbuttoned his white shirt to expose the nuclear freeze T-shirt underneath. I think I nearly died. It’s occasions like this when I think maybe my husband has aspbergers.
Needless to say, he got in trouble, the brother-in-law got in trouble, apologies were handed out like candy, and I am sure we were marked that day.
My son’s talk was appreciated by all, and he proved he had a better understanding of what is appropriate in sacrament meeting. There are advantages to being raised in the church.
