It's Friday, it's 8:30, we're waiting for a bus, it's time to party

I'm your excellent host, Jeff Hofmann. With me as always is...well, all of you readers. Party on, readers.

Inspired by last week's missionary mama drama posts, the few minutes of Wayne's World I saw on TV yesterday, and the lack of anything else particularly entertaining to write about right now, I thought I'd share my favorite missionary story. It doesn't involve babies.

When I was about five months into my mission, I was transferred to the somewhat depressing town of East Kilbride (I linked to that article because it was written less than a month after I left the city, and also for the bizarre reference to "Charlie Dimmock's nipples," which I don't get at all), to be companions with the more depressing Elder McInelly, who had been on his mission almost a year and a half.

Even though he was the senior companion, he was an incredibly indecisive and nontalkative guy. If an appointment fell through, he'd pull out his map and stare at it for ten minutes until I'd finally say, "we could go visit so-and-so," or "we could chap (Scottish for tract) in this neighborhood," and he would say "I guess" in his southern Utah twang, as if to say "fine, but if it doesn't go well it's your fault."

There was only one semi-affluent neighborhood in our proselyting area. It also happened to be the neighborhood farthest away from our apartment. We only went there at night, because during the day the residents were at work (hence the affluence). We always stopped a little earlier than usual when chapping in that neighborhood, because there was only one bus an hour, and as I said we were pretty far away from our ghetto 13th-story apartment.

One night, we were waiting for the bus, and as usual making conversation with Elder McInelly was difficult. We sat there for over five minutes without saying a word to each other. I thought to myself, "This is stupid. We ought to talk to each other."

So I blurt out, "Did you ever find Bugs Bunny attractive when he put on a dress and played a girl bunny?"

The response came: "No."

That was it. That was all he said. I waited about a minute and asked, "Have you seen Wayne's World?"

"I think so, but I don't really remember it."

I explained to him that I was referring to a scene in the movie where Wayne (ironically, Mike Myers' only successful non-British character) and Garth were sitting in the dark in silence, much as we were, when Garth surprised Wayne with the same question. (I've always believed, and this site confirms, that this scene was literally a surprise for Myers--it wasn't in the script. Excellent!)

I can't find the relevant clip from the movie, but here's how it would look in anime. If you don't get the Bugs Bunny reference, here's a uniquely appropriate example of what Garth was talking about.

Side note: if a Scot said something about "Looney Tunes," he'd likely be referring to towns for boys. No way! Way.

If I recall correctly, the bus came a few minutes later, and we didn't speak to each other the rest of the night, and hardly at all for the ten weeks we were companions. I really wanted to ask him what I was supposed to do with a gun rack, but I didn't want him to look at me like monkeys had just flown out of my butt.

P.S. I Googled Charlie Dimmock, and my memory was immediately jogged. Charlie is a woman, for starters, a woman who was on a TV gardening show while I was on my mission, known for not wearing a bra (she was known for that, not me). So the comment in the article makes sense. I suppose it would've been easier to delete the above parenthetical than add this postscript, but I never take the easy way out. (As if!)