Where'd the cat go?

I've always believed that missionaries in the U.S. were a little spoiled. Maybe not spoiled, but they have less things to worry about. Like, where to live. I'm not complaining or anything, but I may have a point. Hear me out on this.

First! A little bit of explanation. Normally, where a missionary lives, the rent is controlled by the mission itself, somebody else looks at contracts, decides where the best deals are, tells the missionaries where to live, etc, etc. In Mexico, this is not the case. The missionaries themselves have to decide where to live, the contracts are in their names etc, etc. The things we have going for us is that, no matter what, we always paid on time and the houses didn't get abused (we were out most of the day, and most of the time indoors we were sleeping.). Now, this is where it gets interesting.

While on my mission, in Tultitlan, Mexico, still with Elder Campbell, we lived in this nice little townhouse. It was a nice place, the landlords treated us well and it had everything we needed, except closets (apparently, those are optional). Anyways, one day, out of the blue, the landlady says that we have to move, ASAP.

We didn't make the contract but we knew that we still had about 2 months to go on our lease. Obviously, we asked why. Something about she can't handle the pressure of having us as tenants, her daughter ran away; her husband got a job out of state; her brother, the owner wanted the house back(which he came and told us that he loved having us. We paid on time, 'member?)

Now, I'm not bitter, but we got kicked out because some other guy was willing to pay like $15 extra a month.

Not bitter at all.

So anyways, here we are, homeless.

Fortunately, there was light at the end of the tunnel. And it came from the Medina family. This family quite literally took us into their arms and home.

You see, they had an extra house 5 houses down from theirs. It was abandoned, but it was somewhere to sleep. So naturally, we took it. There's something funny about abandoned houses though, there's a reason why they're abandoned.

Ours was haunted by a bruja(witch)

Maybe not, but it was creepy as all get out. This was a HUGE house that was a one story in the front that turned into a two story in the back that had a patio on the roof. There was a incredibly thick layer of dirt everywhere. There were broken windows, graffiti in the bathroom, and porn laid out everywhere. Oh, and no electricity or running water. Needless to say, for the first couple of nights, we barricaded ourselves in the room closest to the street hoping that the bruja would save us from the alcoholics and/or druggies.

Home sweet home.

Anyways, after about two days, we noticed that a cat had died on the second floor. It looked like it had been dead for about a week. The thing was started to smell, rats were soon to find it and the thing looked like it had died of a disease or something. So we did the nicest thing we could think of.

We chucked as hard as we could into a field behind the house.

Something like this except funny and the cat is dead.

So the next day, we felt bad and decided to check up on the cat.

The cat? Nowhere to be found.

But there were some dogs looking straight at us as if they were expecting something, though.

The Death Mobile

It's pretty much a given here in the U.S. of A. that once you become of age, you get a car. Now, circumstance vary, but most will get a job and with the help of your parents, buy a car. And for some moronic reason, you think that your first car will be awesome.

I can totally can afford this car working at Wendy's

Anyways, reality comes along and does its little thing and destroys your childlike dreams. Almost all have to settle for a used car. Some are lucky and drive off a dealer's lot. But most, get whatever is sold on the street.

EVEN THEN! I'd say most are lucky and get something good, reputable and for more than $1,000. Such as a Honda Accord, a Toyota, even a Chevy Cavalier, something that was taken care of by its previous owner. Something loved.

I was not so lucky.

My first car...... was an 1987 Dodge Lancer. Let me start off with that MY CAR COST $400. And I went 50/50 with my parents! And I still think I got ripped off!

A car that only existed to make other cars look good.

Follow me on this.

My car had a terminal case of the 80's.  When I got it, it had about three or four shades of brown. The original color, faded, rust and dirt. The interior was dried blood red. That wouldn't be so bad if the interior was in good shape. But, the interior looked like Big Bird had exploded in there. The seats were ripped apart and the yellow foam was everywhere! Let that sink in. Also, there was a slight funk to that car that to this day, I can't figure out what it was or where it came from.

When the car was bought, the radio didn't work. So I went to the junkyard to buy another one. The "new" radio took forever to turn on, but I had my jams. That wasn't so bad except that my horn had a mind of its own. Driving down Thunderbird? HONK! Making a right hand turn on 67th Ave? HU-HOOOONK! Trying to get your friend's attention? Nothing!

One thing though, the A/C worked AWESOME! It was SOOOO awesome that I couldn't turn it off. EVER. And, it was set to high on max cold. Winters sucked.

Whatever, my car is utilitarian. I can still fit 5 people. That would be nice if the doors worked like they were supposed to. My driver's door didn't open from the outside. That was annoying. Not a problem, I can get around that. I'll just go to the rear driver's door. Oh no, wait, it doesn't open AT ALL. Let's hop to the other side. Passenger rear? Didn't open from the inside. Front passenger, window's broken.... yay! RAIN! So let's say that I never had more than one passenger. And the trunk? Useless, it was filled with spare and old parts.

So the car was ugly, but mama says that beauty is only skin deep.

Even if that were true, this car still sucked. Literally. This car had so many vacuum leaks that you could hear them over the engine. Which, by the way, was a feat on its own. Because of the vacuum leaks, the engine revved incredibly high. Mix that with a magical hole in the muffler, and whole car sounded like some sort of pissed off racecar. Which was funny because as soon as you stepped on the gas, there was a possibility that the car would stall out.

Moving on.

Or at least I tried to. It wasn't like I could ever get anywhere fast. This car, could go 0-40mph in about a half mile. Which I had to guess because the spedometer didn't work. Along with the fuel guage. Not going anywhere fast was a good thing because the brakes were pretty...well, they sucked too. I COULD STOP FASTER BY DOWNSHIFTING.

And it's not like I didn't try to fix the thing. I spent about $500 dollars trying to fix the power steering. Which by the way didn't work. And I said tried fixing it, because I changed every, single, freaking, part, and for some reason, it didn't work. Have you ever tried parking without power steering? Let's just say that the gym lost all necessity for me while I owned this car.

With all this, I only took this car on the freeway, once. I made it all the way up to traffic speed(the spedometer didn't work), and it felt like every panel, every bolt was trying to mutiny against this abomination that still somehow managed to move on its own power.

I tried to fix this car, I really did. In the end, I spent over 1,200 dollars trying to make it "cool", or to you lawyers, "safe".

What made me give up? Why am I driving a truck now instead of this little diamond in the rough?

A gas line decided to start leaking all over my exhaust.

Waldo; cooked medium rare.

No, not really, but that's when I decided that I needed something that wasn't actively trying to kill me.

What's the whole point to this?

Even though this car was menace to all things living and some that weren't. I loved this car. The two years that I drove it, I enjoyed every minute of it...except for the freeway.

I don't think I'm supposed to be here.

  So, we all go through weird situations. Let me tell you about the earliest one I can remember.

I had just moved from El Paso, Texas to Phoenix, AZ. I was nine and was to start the 4th grade at Sahuaro Elementary. I was nervous about my first day.

"Nine year old kid at a new school. What's so weird about that?", you may say.

Well, that's where the normalcy ends, dear reader.

First off, I noticed that EVERY kid was bigger than me. "Fine", my little ego said, "I'm the little guy, I can still make friends. Nothing wrong about this, I'm cool."

But, I started noticing that these kids had WAY different tastes than I did. I was still digging the Power Rangers while most of the other kids were into COPS and The Simpsons.

Don't deny it, Kimberly was the one you paid most attention to.

Then things started to get strange.

As classes started, I noticed that I had absolutely NO IDEA what was going on. Especially math.
In third grade, I had just finished learning how to multiply and divide. Now I was learning some kajigger about little two's that were all powerful.

Exponents: OBEY

As dumb as I was when I was nine, I knew something was wrong. But I was still dumb.... and curious. So I stuck with it.

Anyways, apparently some teacher noticed the short, dumbfounded 9 yr old walking around and let the Principal know.

Short time later, the principal walked up to me and told me, "Soooo... ummm... there's was a misunderstanding. Turns out that we were supposed to put you in the 4th grade."

"Huh?"

"You see, you were just in the 6th grade. That's why nothing made sense."

AH!

Moral of the story?
Roll with the punches! You'll learn sooner or later!

Utah, or the place I'd rather not go back to.

Apparently, I have somewhat of a reputation of being a "troublemaker". This reputation precedes me. I don't know how this gets around and not, "Hey, I'm looking for date", but I digress. I say I'm not a troublemaker, but I must agree to a certain extent because the evidence is overwhelmingly against me.......

...so let me tell you how I had an arrest warrant out for me.

But first! Another story that somehow relates!

It's April 2006 and I'm traveling to Provo, Utah to report to the MTC so I can go on my mission.  All is well. With me, is my family. ALL of them, parents included. I'm driving this Franken-van past Beaver City, Utah.... and I get pulled over, because cops there don't have anything else to do.

Speed demon.

I get pulled over for going 90 MPH in a 75 MPH zone. The one non-Mormon cop in all of UTAH isn't moved by my brother's sob story of how I have to be in Provo. But, he's nice enough to drop the ticket to 84 MPH so my speeding isn't a criminal offense. Nothing too bad or exceptionally embarrassing about this except for my sister-in-law dropping the question, "Weren't you using cruise-control?"

Which I was, at 90 MPH.

Anyways, two months and an unrelated one-car accident that I was involved in later(different story), I'm serving as a missionary waiting for my Mexico visa in Logan, Utah. And I'm running around trying to get some investigators to go to an activity that was apparently important at the time.

As it turns out, cops up there don't have much to do there either.

Imagine this, my companion, Elder Ulman and I, in full missionary attire, are pulled over in front of a church building with a female cop. I was driving. Said cop walks up to me and the first words out of her mouth are, "Hello Elder, do you know how fast you were going?" Apparently, being a missionary isn't a "get out of a ticket" card. I was going 40 MPH in a 25 MPH zone. She was nice enough to drop it to 34 MPH so it wasn't a criminal offense.

Zoom, zoom!

Fine, my bad, I'll just pay the ticket, I'll just have to wait a week because of paperwork or what-have-you.

Turns out that the visa that I had been waiting for comes in the day BEFORE I can pay the ticket. I am to leave immediately. What follows is the worst/funniest phone call I've ever made to my parents.

"Hi dad, how are you? Good? Good. Me? Good, good. Yeah, I'm at the airport on my way to Mexico. Oh, my mom's there too? Good, good. Listen, I need a favor, can you guys pay a speeding ticket for me? Yes, I know it's my second one..... I love you?"

Turns out that Utah doesn't like it when you don't pay tickets within two weeks and run away to a foreign country. So, they issued a bench warrant for my arrest. I was a fugitive for about 2 weeks or so.

According to my dad, it's all been taken care of. But I'm not willing to find out.

Moral of the story? Don't go to Utah.

There are worse things out there though.