Germ Warfare at the MTC

"There are 150 missionaries under quarantine right now," my boss said, gravely.

It was 6:00am. Our little crew of freedom fighters custodians was gathered in the office, being debriefed on the situation. Apparently, the sickness many missionaries had been complaining to us about recently was more vicious than we had originally anticipated. And steps needed to be taken.

"It's our responsibility," she continued, "to do everything we can to keep these missionaries safe and healthy. If they're sick in bed, they aren't learning what they need to learn. With the 18- and 19-year-old missionaries coming in, everyone's MTC time is being cut shorter and shorter. Some of them are in here for only 12 days. They don't have time to be sick! We can't control everything, but we can control what goes on in these four buildings. So let's get to work!"

We got to work.

While the missionaries were all being instructed not to shake hands with anyone, not to hug their companions, not to touch their faces, etc. - we were being instructed on Virex, "our new best friend." Virex is an all-purpose disinfectant spray that we've used on occasion before, but now we'd be needing bottles and bottles of it. We were to disinfect everything - desks, doorknobs, handrails, light switches, keyboards, even the hand sanitizer units themselves. Every day until this epidemic passed, we would be on the front lines of this fight.

But it couldn't stop with us. The missionaries had to be personally responsible for their own health. So we set up Disinfectant Stations on each floor, next to the custodial closets. Each station had a bottle of Virex, a box of disposable gloves, a pile of rags, and a container of wipes. After we'd set everything up, we were supposed to go around to all the missionary classrooms and tell them about the situation.

But they already knew.

"We're the only ones left in our district," one elder said, pointing to his companion. "There used to be nine of us."

"Both my companions are already sick," another elder said.

Despite the worry on many faces, some missionaries refused to fret. They remained determinedly lighthearted.  "Are the custodians all freaking out because everyone's dying?" one elder asked us, laughing.

"It's like Doomsday and the apocalypse had a baby in here," a sister joked.

We were told it was only a flu. "They're not calling it a flu," our boss reported, rolling her eyes. "But it's vomiting and diarrhea, and I'm pretty sure it's the same bug I had two weeks ago." So we didn't worry overmuch. The missionaries might be miserably sick, but they'd be better soon enough. And anyway, 150 missionaries isn't that great a percentage of the MTC (which is designed to hold 4,000).

But still . . .

"Is that an ambulance?" I asked my partner, Macall, as a not-distant-enough siren's wail echoed into the stairwell where we were mopping.

Macall walked down to the second floor landing, where two large windows showed the entrance to the MTC. "Yup."

"Is it coming here?" I joked.

"Yup."

"What?!" I hurried down to the landing and stood beside her. We watched as an ambulance and a fire truck turned into the MTC and were directed by the security guards toward the parking lot. We looked at each other, unsure.

Near the end of our shift, the boss called us all into her office again. This time, all of us had new information, mostly gathered from the missionaries gossiping in our hallways. "They've all been told to leave class immediately if they feel sick," one girl said. "We already had a missionary throw up in his classroom," I reported. "One of the elders told me that 70 missionaries were taken to the emergency room over New Year's," someone else added. "Are we sure this is a flu?" someone asked, nervously.

Our boss admitted that she wasn't sure if it was a flu at all. The number of missionaries under quarantine now was over 300 - it had doubled during the four hours we'd been there. Whatever the disease was, it was spreading fast.

She told us that there had been a lot of meetings held about it already. Hundreds of people now were working on the issue, from lowly custodians like us to the suit-and-tie executives running the place. The germs might have a head start, but we were ready for them now.

We are fighting. And since the Lord's on our side, there's no question who will win the war.

It just might get a little ugly in the meantime.

Rehearsing and Performing

Today I had the opportunity to perform at Devotional with the University Chorale. We reported to the Marriott Center at 10:15 (almost an entire hour early) and started warming up. Once everybody had arrived and climbed over each other, trying to find a seat in their section in this confusing new setting, our conductor motioned for us to stand. The rehearsal began.

It was painstaking. We'd been rehearsing the song (among others) since September, but never had we pounded it out quite as methodically as we did today. First we had to fix our vowels. Then we had to fix our intonation. Then pacing. Then dynamics. Then phrasing. Then lift. And finally, we were reminded to fix our faces. "The cameras will be right on you," our conductor said. "Be excited. Tell the story with your face."

It was a bit stressful. I was worried about our ability to focus on all of those things at once, and I was worried that my worry would keep me from having a story-telling face. I wanted more time to rehearse, but the organ was starting to play. Devotional had begun.

So we performed. And you know what? It went really well. I had fun singing the song, feeling the music as I connected with my fellow performers, conductor, and audience. The Spirit was there, and it filled in the gaps in our performance. Everything was okay. Actually, everything was pretty terrific!

It wasn't until later that I realized that this is what writing is often like for me.

Prewriting, outlining, drafting, revising, redrafting, and editing - these are the literary forms of rehearsal, and they can vary from fun and exciting to painstaking and miserable, depending on the day. The closer I get to the performance (actually turning something in), the more anxious and stressed I get about every flaw in the rehearsal. But once the performance comes - do or die - I find that my fears were mostly for naught. My hard work has paid off, and my progress shows.

This is also usually the time when I remember that writing (or singing) is something I choose to do. Because it's fun. And despite all of my doubts and anxieties, I am good at it.

I am really grateful for performance days.

Jr. High Hallways

Age changes things. Even though I knew it was coming, it is so strange to have it hit me so forcefully - and when I'm only 21! It just doesn't feel like it's been very long since I was in junior high; and yet when I stepped foot in one yesterday I found myself in a war zone unlike anything I can remember.

Teenagers are LOUD.

The halls ring with laughter and shouting and other (less flattering) noises. Tile floors and metal lockers  serve as excellent amplifiers, so the sound gets rebounded a hundred times before it dies down. I felt as though I were swimming in the waves of noise.

But really I was swimming in a throbbing mass of adolescence. Teenagers seem to have no qualms about touching each other - I was bumped, jostled, rammed, and nearly run over a dozen times before I made it down the hall to the classroom I would be observing for the day. In that time I witnessed a lot of intentional touching as well (and that part I remember) - hugging and slapping and picking each other up . . . the energy of the place was almost alarming.

I watched keenly, like a scientist on safari, trying to make sense of these strange beasts who looked so much like humans. And yet, no matter how hard I tried, I could not - for the life of me! - figure out which teenagers were friends and which ones were enemies. They were all hitting each other, shoving each other, throwing each other into trash cans, and yet they were all smiling. It made no sense. No sense at all.

And then I remembered a time when I was in junior high - when my friends and I shoved someone in a locker just to see if he would fit, and then walked away, leaving him trapped, because it was so funny. And even the kid in the locker was laughing. Rattling the handle and laughing his head off.

Maybe it doesn't have to make sense. Maybe that's just the nature of junior high.

Well, that's all very well for the teenagers. But if I'm going to survive in this jungle as an adult - full of sensitivities and a strange yearning for order - then I think I'm going to need a pith helmet. Junior high is a dangerous place.

Grammar Rule Narrative

          *** What follows is a brief essay I wrote for my Teaching Grammar class. The point of the essay was to tell a story that involved a disagreement over the "rules" of the English language. I was to perform a good deal of research on the "rule" I chose, and it was my task to weave that research into my story in a meaningful way. To those who know the story, I would ask that you keep this in mind: I wrote this trying to preserve the impressions of my teenage-mind. My current self wouldn't agree with everything she has to say. *** 

           Anyone who has ever been a Mormon teenage girl can tell you about the Young Women program. Designed to function as both a religious class and an extracurricular club, each local Young Women group consists of twelve- to eighteen-year-old girls, and is run by a presidency made up of middle-aged Mormon women. My own experiences in Young Women were highly satisfactory . . . until the local president and I began to fight about my supposed lack of proper respect for authority figures. Once she decided that I was an impudent child, I decided that she was an idiot – a fact that was proven to me when she sent home a list of supplies that we would need for “Girls Camp” that year.

            Girls Camp? Wrong. It should have been “Girls’ Camp.” I took the list to my editing-inclined mother and asked, “How can I be expected to show respect to someone who can’t even use an apostrophe?”

            “But she doesn’t need to use an apostrophe there,” Mom responded. Blaspheme. I left silently: They were obviously in it together.

            What I didn’t know at fifteen was that the apostrophe has ever been an item of confusion for even the most dedicated scholars. Although apostrophes were used as early as the 16^th century to indicate omissions, there was no attempt to govern the other types of usage until the mid-19^th century (Cavella, and Kernodle). The basic rules upon which most modern scholars agree dictate that apostrophes can be used in three ways: possessives, contractions, and unusual plurals – such as “the aye’s have it” (Bullock, and Weinberg). I understood this. The phrase was “Girls’ Camp,” I thought, because it was our camp. It belonged to us.

            That precise assumption is what causes the confusion. Because according to writers Tim North and Richard Nordquist, the word “girls” in that phrase does not signify ownership; rather, it is a description – much like “a writers manual” or “a childrens book” (Nordquist). They would argue that the camp is not owned by girls, it is for girls; therefore, the use of a possessive apostrophe would be inappropriate, incorrect. And I would be wrong (North, Nordquist).

            Both I and my Young Women President were following the rules – we were just using different playbooks. Grammar, like every other aspect of language, reflects the power structure of the society in which it is made. My president’s insistence that the apostrophe was unnecessary was a continuation of her insistence that I – as a minor – had no place in the administration and control of our activities, while my own determination to scribble the apostrophe in anyway was a physical manifestation of exactly the impudence she had been accusing me of. I was going to take ownership of my life, whether the rules permitted it or not. Oddly enough, the apostrophe was my tool for rebellion.

            Incidentally, the LDS church’s stance on the issue is this: they refer to it as Young Women Camp. Without the apostrophe.

Teething Pains

The worst place in the world for a cameraman is a dentist's office.

Why? I wondered, standing awkwardly against the wall - my lips aching from their imprisonment in one of those spreader-devices - as the young dentist leaned closer and pushed the camera lens into my face. Why can't I ever have a dentist appointment that isn't completely awkward?

I have a long, blistering history with oral physicians. Dentists, orthodontists, oral surgeons, you name it. My experience with puberty was inexorably woven with these types of people; from the age of thirteen to adulthood, I had no idea what it was like to eat without wire fences in the way. (However, I was all too familiar with getting my sliding metal tubes stuck and being frozen with a roaring mouth.) After years of associating that ultra-sophisticated office with pain and disappointment, I concluded as a seventeen-year-old that "Orthodontists are soul-eaters."

Now that I am a few healthy strides into maturity, I have decided to forgive all the orthodontists, dentists, hygienists, surgeons, and nurses who have ever stabbed me in the mouth. In retrospect, I realize that they were all trying to help me, and that without them my teeth would still be rows of rubble. So I went to my dentist appointment yesterday with the intent to be cheery and helpful, to show my thanks for all that their kind has done for me.

And as a reward, I was attacked by the paparazzi, scrutinized and critiqued and "Don't you think you should Whiten those?"-ed until I thought even my teeth would begin blushing in embarrassment.

Some things never change.

Bathroom Blunder

Two of our missionaries never showed up. That's how it started.

I had planned the day's service assignments thinking that we'd be getting 12 missionaries total: two companionships for each of the three shifts. But when the second shift was halfway over and I still hadn't received my fourth pair, I realized there'd be trouble. Especially because - as if they knew what was coming - the missing missionaries were the ones I'd planned to have clean our bathrooms. Now I'd have to push the assignment onto one of the pairs coming later.

But I had only four more missionaries coming, and they were all brand new to service. That was the next problem: new missionaries have to go through an orientation meeting that takes about 20 minutes, cutting into their service time. And since bathrooms are the most complicated and the most important thing we have to clean, I'd need to spend at least another 5 minutes training the missionaries on that specific job. It usually takes two Elders the full 75 minutes of service to finish cleaning all six bathrooms in the building; how could I expect a pair of Greenies to finish in 50 minutes?

I made a decision that seemed sensible. I would simply put all four of the new missionaries on the job. That's not how we usually divide it up, but I thought I could make it work. And with twice the number of missionaries on the job, they should be able to finish in plenty of time.

I talked it over with my partner, Jackalope. Together, we figured out the system that we thought would be most efficient - the first companionship would do the basic cleaning, and then the second companionship would follow close behind with a rinse, mop, and dry. No problem.

Yes problem.

The first companionship was very good, quickly understanding their jobs and performing them with admirable speed. The second companionship was more worried about doing things right, and this slowed them down. So when the first companionship moved on to the next bathroom - taking the CLOSED FOR CLEANING sign with them - the second companionship wasn't ready to start yet. And since this was the first time I've tried to have the bathrooms cleaned this way, I didn't foresee the terrible consequences.

You see, when the first companionship moved on, they left the sinks and toilet soaking in industrial strength chemical. Jackalope and I had considered this a plus - with more time to sit, the chemical would have a stronger effect. What we had not considered was that without a custodial sign outside the door, the building's patrons had no way of knowing that the bathroom was in the midst of being cleaned. They didn't know what they were walking into - or rather, what they were sitting into.

And so it came to pass that I walked into the men's bathroom with our second pair of missionaries - planning to instruct them on the proper methods of rinse-mop-drying - and happened upon my friend Jorge, a regular volunteer, occupying one of the stalls. There was the initial moment of rueful embarrassment . . . . then came a dreadful realization.

Jorge just got Sparquat all over his keister!

I froze in the hallway, eyes slamming open. My hand slapped into position on my horrorstruck mouth. I poisoned him! The chemical will just soak into his flesh and dry up his innards. My imagination rattled its cage as I raced to think through the situation. He's probably caught fire by now and we'll be hearing his tortured scream any second. Oh why did I tell them to take the sign with them? I'm a biochemical felon!

I ran to Jackalope and confessed. Her physical reaction was an echo of my own. She looked terrified. "What are we going to do?" I asked. "Should we tell him?"

"No! How would we tell him?!" Jackalope fretted. She went into prevention mode, making CLOSED signs out of paper and taping them to the bathroom doors, belatedly. I watched, needles running through my veins, and waited for some kind of alarm to go off. Jackalope soon joined me, standing tensely by the wall. We waited for consequence to arrive.

Instead, Jorge walked out of the bathroom. He ambled down the hall, smiling and waving at us as he walked past. We smiled back. (Our teeth might have crushed walnuts.) I subtly checked for burn marks on his pants.

Then he was gone.

"Er, Jessica?" The Elders I had abandoned were peaking around the corner, looking for instruction. Immediately I was back at work, rushing to finish the job before the missionaries had to leave. But for the rest of the shift, I couldn't help feeling incomplete and unfinished.

My consequence had walked away. But that didn't make it any less real. It only meant that I couldn't see it, and its horrors slowly faded into the fearsome unknown.

If you think we control our choices, think again.
Choices have feet.
When you aren't looking, they'll run away from you.
Good luck getting them back.

Injured Missionaries

I have heard it said that the fact that the LDS church can send thousands of 19-year-old boys out into the furthermost reaches of the world for two years and have almost all of them return home safely should be proof enough that we've got God on our side. It is simply miraculous that they survive, let alone that they are able to change the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. What I don't think most people consider, however, is how miraculous it is that missionaries survive the MTC experience itself.

No, this is not going to be a post about MTC food.

In my job as a Building Care employee, I have four to sixteen missionaries report to me every morning for their service assignments. And during my six months at the MTC I have been surprised at how many of those missionaries show up with some type of injury. Before I walked through those high-security gates, I had considered the MTC to be a mild place, strictly governed and well-organized. And so it is. But what I failed to realize was that when a young man - barely out of his teenage frolics - is dragged into a world where even fun has to be scheduled in, there mounts inside him an enormous pressure; all of his yearnings for freedom and chaos build up on each other and focus themselves into one thing: physical exertion.

I have never witnessed a gym hour at the MTC. I am a little afraid to do so. I have heard enough stories and seen enough battle scars to get an idea for how intensely these missionaries play. (After all, it is the only "play" they get.) One thing I do admire is that even when they are bruised and battered, the missionaries still come to do their service. Here are some of the wounds I have witnessed.

Broken nose
Abrasions on arms
Bloodied face
Broken arm
Broken leg
Torn ligaments
and, as of today, Concussion.

"How'd you get a concussion?" I asked Elder Taylor (fake name), not sure if I should be laughing or commiserating.

He shrugs and gives the stereotypical answer, "Basketball." When I nod knowingly, he continues, "I bashed my head into another player. He was okay, but I . . . well, I don't really like doctors, so I just went back to my dorm room at first. But then my headache just wouldn't go away, and my vision started to go all funky, and I thought I was going to throw up, so -"

"So you finally went to a doctor?" I asked, his unconcerned behavior reminding me of my little brother, and awakening a motherly alarm in me that I didn't realize I had.

"Well, we couldn't because it was Labor Day, and everything was closed. So they had to take me to the Emergency Room."

"What?!"

"Yeah, but I'm okay now," Elder Taylor said, grinning.

I just looked at him for a minute, scrutinizing his innocent smile. I smiled back. "That's the part you should tell your mother," I said, "that you're getting better. You maybe shouldn't tell her the other stuff."

"Right," he said, as if it were obvious. Hiding the scary details from your mother is the only kind of secret combination allowed at the MTC. In fact, I'm beginning to think that's the reason they don't allow families into the MTC anymore. Perhaps those high-security gates are meant to protect - not so much the safety of the missionaries - but the sanity of their mothers.