Confessions

I’ve always known that I don’t fit into the little box that other Mormons I know seem to occupy so nicely. In fact, I once ended a relief society lesson that I was teaching by announcing to the ladies that I was a Jack Mormon. It made me want to create the following list, and so here goes.

The Grand List of Reasons that that I am, and have always been, a Bad Mormon:

1. I’ve never nor has my family ever had a subscription to The Church News. Nor did I know it came out every week in your Deseret News newspaper until years after I was married.
2. Around my house, we read the Salt Lake Tribune. Boo! Hiss!
3. I never get any of the good “85% off with an additional 15%” deals on clothes, food, and the like that my neighbors get. I tend to pay *gasp!* full price, or, when I’m lucky, 50% off.
4. I understand the little-known concept that wickedness might never have been happiness, but man, it was fun. They didn’t really teach that principle in seminary.
5. I never once set foot in Young Women during the two years I should have been a Laurel, despite the fact I was the Mia Maid class president. How does that happen?
6. I quit seminary in my junior year of high school. The replacement class I found? Algebra I, even though I was also taking trigonometry. Man, my fellow algebra I students thought had skillz.
7. Sometimes on Easter while growing up, we went to the Sand Dunes instead of church. And if Christmas fell on a Sunday, I can almost guarantee we wouldn’t have been there.
8. I regularly have to wonder if someone from my ward will see me purchasing something that goes against the word of wisdom. Even if it isn’t mine, they still see it in my cart!
9. I’ve never had a coupon at the grocery store that made any of the items in my cart free. And I’m too lazy to go through the effort of figuring out how to get my hands on such coupons.
10. My bookshelves are full of books written by gentiles who I regularly rave about. I think the only LDS author by whom I own a book is Stephanie Meyer. I guess you could count my scriptures, but I’m not sure if God is a Latter-day Saint or not.
11. I used to order real margaritas at restaurants when we would go out with a friend and his under-21 girlfriend. She would order the virgin margarita and then we would swap. I didn’t really feel that I was contributing to the delinquency of a minor, either.
12. Speaking of Stephanie Meyer, I don’t own the entire Twilight collection. I do have the 1^st and 4^th books. And I didn’t see Twilight until 2 weeks ago. Now I know for sure that I’m not living up to my full potential.
13. I can’t name all the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (either current or the original, thank you very much). But I can recognize most of their names, I think.
14. I didn’t see the sustaining part of general conference until I had two children, and even then I had to make a special effort to see it. I don’t think I even knew they did it during conference until after I was married. Saturday afternoon conference was for shopping, I thought.
15. And finally, I’ve never, ever once made green (or any other color) jell-o as a side dish. I haven’t even considered it.

I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but you get the picture.

So in what ways are YOU a Jack Mormon, or Jack Catholic, or Jack anything? Something you want to confess?