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Show Ogden to live with her sister Aunt Davina, Uncle Boss, and my cousin Sharlee who I hate. I was baptized Latter-Day Saint, but Mom and Dad weren't regular with it, and I strayed. But I got to say, with Aunt Davina and Uncle Boss I went to Sunday school and learned about Jesus and Brother Joseph, Nephites and Lamanites, and the early Saints making their pilgrimage to the desert, and I really felt the Holy Ghost there for a while. Then I got to pondering so much paradox and the nature of the still small spirit of the Lord. I determined it wasn't anything but my taste for dramatic emotions taking advantage, the same as with a tragical play or movie, and it was a mistake to prescribe the feeling to the Lord; it was just sympathy for human suffering. I thought this a long while but played the devotee in public. I reasoned like how some places there were Catholics and others Baptists, or Methodists, or Jews, or Buddhists, here the people were Mormons, and it would be disrespectful of our culture for me to blow the whistle. Some people been calling me an apostate, Sharlee chief among them, but the tmth is I'm as Mormon as the rest of them, allowing for different reasons. I collect fast offerings and bless sacrament and attend Priests Quorum regular, same as them. When I came to be with Aunt Davina and Uncle Boss I even confessed in Bishop Hearthway's office my carnal sins, including nocturnal emissions and my habit of personal interference, an embarrassment, especially since the Bishop gave me all kinds of advice for avoiding temptation like playing yo-yo when I got the urge, or always going to the bathroom with the door open so I couldn't have privacy to defile my stuff. Well, me and Sharlee were adversaries from starts, and she came off righteous calling me shameless for voiding bowels with an open door, and then when I pulled it |
