Ten for Tuesday--Favorite Teenage Memories

1. Getting my Driver's License! In Idaho, we could get a driver's license at age 14. Yipee! Our family had a '59 Ford, similar to the one in the picture below (except ours was white, and it was just a Ford Custom, rather than a Galaxie). It had a stick shift on the steering column that I had to learn to use, and I did. Sometimes I would drive the car out on the highway heading towards Arco and see how fast I could get the Ford to go. I will never tell my Dad what I did, or how high I could get the speedometer to reach.

2. My first teenage boyfriend--the one who took me on my first date. I really liked him--for a long time. Now, though, when I take a good look back at our relationship, I sometimes wonder if he was so good to me so he could be close to my friend, LeeAnn, who dated a friend of his. We were often in the same group. I won't tell anyone how old I was when I had my first date, so don't ask.

3. My first concert. When I was in the 8th grade, the Letterman performed in concert in Pocatello. It was a missionary effort, and we were to take someone with us who was either non-member or inactive. I am not sure just how many of that category were actually in attendance, but the group performed to a packed house, and we all loved their concert.

4. Driving around in my best friend's car. Annette's father had a Volkswagen, almost like the one below, and, even though Idaho's law said you were to be 16 to be able to drive at night, her dad often let her take the car before she reached that age. We used to drive past the homes of all the cute boys and see if we could spot them. A couple of times we got caught, but hey, it was all worth it.

5. The day my house caught on fire. My 10th grade debate class had just started when my teacher told me I was wanted in the office. When I got there, the secretary told me my home was burning. My father, a school teacher, had already left, but the principal was willing to drive me home. I expected to see the whole house in flames when I got there, but there was only some smoke (the picture below is NOT my home, just another one that has smoke coming out the windows). The fire was put out with not a lot of burn damage. What had burned was my basement bedroom--the cement walls contained the flames. I lost almost everything I owned.

There was a lot of smoke damage, though, so we all stayed someplace else for a few days. I stayed at first one friend's house and then another. A kind ward member let my parents use their empty rental home.

What made this a good memory was the way our friends and neighbors gathered around us to help. The mothers of some of my friends held a "shower" for me and invited a huge crowd to replace my wardrobe. Members of the ward washed walls and repainted. There were many hours of service given to my family. It was very humbling to feel so loved.

6. All church dance festival. Back in the "old days," the church used to hold a huge dance festival every June in Salt Lake, held in the University of Utah football stadium. When I was 16, some of the members of our stake were able to participate. One of the young men in our ward and I were our ward's dance directors, and we got to teach the others the dances. We did almost everything right, but when the stake dance directors came to see how our ward was doing, we all discovered that we had taught one part of the dance backwards! Oh well, we did it anyway, and I don't think that anyone else was the wiser.

7. BYU homecoming. The fall of my senior year, I traveled to Provo, Utah, along with a couple of other friends, and attended BYU's homecoming. I stayed with one of my cousins, and she arranged for me to have a date to Fieldhouse Frolics and the football game. We got to see BYU's quarterback, Virgil Carter (pictured below) lead BYU to a 28-14 win over Utah State University. At that time, Utah State was a football powerhouse, occasionally being ranked among the top 10 football teams in the country, so it was exciting to see the Y win the game.

For a small town girl, I found the buildings at the Y to be immense and was continually awed by the campus. Little did I know that the school would, in a few years, pay my husband's salary for a l-o-n-g time.

8. Debate tournaments. My senior year I was a member of our high school debate team and spent many week-ends traveling from school to school to participate in debate tournaments. Our school's women's team, of which I was a part, earned the right to travel to Moscow, Idaho, to participate in the state tournament. We didn't take first place, but we had a great trip anyway. Can you find me in the picture?

9. Dad and General Conference. The first few weeks of my freshman year at the Y, I was really homesick, so when one of my cousins invited me to go to Salt Lake to see my dad when he came down for General Conference, I jumped at the chance. We went to Temple Square to see if we could find my dad. Now, anyone who has been on Temple Square during conference weekend knows that the picture below is a weak indication of the number of people who attend conference. So, how was I supposed to find my father? I just knew that he would be showing up for the meeting at the time and place where he was expected to be. Sure enough, we watched and waited, and soon, there he was. I think he was as glad to see me as I was to see him. Because he was supposed to sit in area blocked out for bishops and stake presidents, I didn't get to attend the session with him, but we did make plans to meet after the meeting ended. I not only enjoyed the time spent with him, but it was a great feeling to know that I could depend on my dad to be where he was supposed to be when he was supposed to be there. My dad has always been that way.

10. Meeting my husband. I was still only 18 when I walked into a sacrament meeting and noticed the smile and dimples of the handsome returned missionary pictured below. It didn't take long for me to know that he was special, and two years later (there are a lot of stories there), we were married. I would definitely say this was my most memorable teenage memory.