Sometimes being rude is not the worst thing, people

This year I am determined to be One Who Does Her Visiting Teaching. (For non-LDS friends, this is a church program where we are assigned a couple of people from our congregation to visit each month.) It's not in a "we're watching you and if you don't have enough gingham or Americana decorations in your living room then we're turning you in" way, but more of a "Hey, let's become friends so that when you need help after your seventh child is born I'll know about it and can bring nourishing cream-of-MSG-based casseroles to your home." Visiting Teaching is a little bit more fun among singles, I think, because lots of times what our sweet sisters really need is a night of chocolate, SLAs, and someone to tell them why that boy really was not even good enough for them and probably has a raging self-abuse problem, which is why she totally dodged a bullet and should actually be feeling very fortunate right now.

Anyway. Visiting Teaching. I am going to do it. I went to see one of the girls on my new route this past Sunday. She owns a nice townhome a few blocks away from me. I asked if she lives alone and she said that she used to have roommates but after a really bad experience she doesn't anymore. And never will again. In life. One example of The Badness was when her last roommate, who was insane and had an insane family, went out of town, gave a key to her felon sister, and told the sister she could stay there. My friend told the girl she could not stay, but she did anyway. For 3 weeks. Why my friend did not call the cops 3 minutes into THAT little scene is beyond me.

This is why I think the Young Women program would do well to add assertiveness training to its weekly activities. Please notice that I did not say "passive aggressiveness training" because that particular quality seems to cultivate itself quite well already and is possibly somehow spread through the water in the LDS chapel drinking fountains. But a bit of "Why we don't let people turn our homes into drug trafficking centers and risk waking up one morning to an empty house and a pair of missing kidneys" lessons would not go amiss, I think.

Posted in: being a Mormon