Covert Plop

Covert Plop
Ok, this story, at first, may seem like it isn’t about me at all; but trust me it is.  In order to lay some groundwork, though, we have to talk about Aaron for a bit.  You see, growing up it seems like he was always hatching some secret plot and enacting some clandestine operation.  Sometimes they were in the basement, sometimes a tree house, sometimes in the nature at black diamond, and it really didn’t end when he grew up, seems like he’s still always planning some covert raid of some sort.
When I was little I just ate all the covertness up.  I remember walking to school one day and he found a piece of splintered wood, we picked it up.  Later on the walk he found a piece of rubber covered wire and went on to tell me how the wire was a sheath for the wooden dagger we found earlier, and how there were these people that hid such things all around and were seeing who would find them and put the pieces together.  He made it seem like there was really some shadowy organization out there somewhere that was placing these daggers and sheathes around. They were also hiding, for some unknown nefarious purpose, any other piece of trash that a child’s imagination might morph into some instrument of destruction, so that the junk would be found by him.  Really, I’m not making this up; at least I don’t think I am, and I don’t exactly know if he knew that he was making it up either.
Nevertheless, we need to get on with the story.  Suffice it to say that I was pretty in to all of this secret stuff and the covert operations and all.  Furthermore, when a big brother told you to do something, you did it; especially when it involved secrets and the possibility of getting caught by shadowy organizations.  So all this sets up the situation that comes next.  Aaron was about to set off on one of his secret raids or some such activity and he needed an accomplice.  Well maybe he just didn’t want me going up in the attic with him; but in any case I was tasked with being a sentinel at the base of the stairs while he completed his mission in the attic.  I was told in no uncertain terms not to leave my post until he returned.  So I stayed…and stayed…and stayed.  However, after a while I became conflicted; for, while I was supposed to stay at my lookout, I felt a growing need to go to the bathroom.  I couldn’t possibly fulfill both of my tasks, obviously I had to choose between them…or did I?
Interesting fact #1:  Secret agents are chosen based partly on their ability to do multiple things at once, and the best kind of secret agent is one that can multi-task to get several objectives done at the same time.  That day, I was the best kind of secret agent.
Interesting fact#2:  It is no fun to stand as sentinel with a deuce in your drawers…especially the runny kind.
So after what seemed like an eternity Aaron completed his objective and came back down the stairs.  My commitment to him was over, but now I had a new mission to complete, a covert operation of my own to perform.  Nobody could ever discover the sacrifices that had to be made to complete Aaron’s mission that day, not even him.  All evidence must be disposed of, but how to do that while not throwing away my shorts and wasting money, it was a real enigma.  The epiphany struck, I could leave my shorts in the bathroom just around the corner.  If I left them in the shower they might never be found, and if they were, younger siblings could be framed, or better yet, the evidence would probably be eaten by dogs.  Disgusting, I know but these missions oft times called for desperate measures.  So I enacted the plan flawlessly and while I don’t remember my escape route that day, it probably involved a streaking boy, naked as the day he was born, from the waist down dashing around the pool, through the gate, up the stairs, over the deck. Past the first doors and finally into the second set of doors, safe again, back at base.
The mission must have been a success, because those shorts were never seen again…at least not by me.
Matthew 2006

Just your average childhood

Just your average childhood
I suppose that I have led a relatively boring life. I suppose this for two reasons really, first, I constantly find myself escaping it to much more interesting worlds created in my head and second because I can’t think of a single interesting story for this years beloved Christmas eve story extravaganza bonanza extraordinaire. So I will tell many. I’m going to attempt to recount the myriad experiences that I had growing up in a sort of random free association format. Consider this a pretty rough draft, (it is Christmas Eve for crying out loud.) Here we go.
Our house itself was an epicenter of activity, from the labyrinth of bush tunnels in the front yard to the secret forest behind our pool. And the back path leading from there to the grass and the climbing tree, which was very near to the hole in the sandbox and just around the corner from there were the feared woodpile full of spiders and beehive full of, well, bees of course. All these things added up to endless hours of imagining and playing. Mike and I were particularly fond of climbing up on the roof and throwing our cabbage patch kids off and jumping after them. Aaron introduced me to his secret club of sorts under the house where our clay creations (mined from the sandbox area) could exist in silent solitude. We also explored the attic at great lengths.
Inside the house I spent much of my time creating lego masterpieces and other pieces of art. And let’s not forget the ever popular sport of balcony diving. I was never too good at that though.
Just up the street were the Joneses. I spent a lot of my time there playing with Richard. He came along on a lot of my adventures. Including muscle men in his sandbox and power rings made of Barry’s bakery white bread. Our last great adventure together was us staying up late popping caps across the street and both thinking that we were going to get into so much trouble for being out so late. That was actually the end of all these adventures because that was my last night in that house.
In the near vicinity were the new houses. Which afforded us with many exploration runs finding knotholes and for me the incredible little foam sticky things on new windows. There was also a tree house in that area that we worked on and around which I seem to have found a very old penny. There were also dirt mounds to ride our bikes on. That was fun until I managed to fly through the air and land underneath my bike.
That was all east of the house, just to the west was a little trail that served as a shortcut to 7-eleven and all the treasures therein. Fun-dip, big league chew, cherry-clan, Alexander the grape, lemon-heads, and who could forget garbage pail kids gum.
A little further west was hiking at black diamond mines, also known in my world as the shire and other parts of middle earth, I never saw a hobbit but I just knew they were there. After all, treebeard was there and so were many mineshafts that must have lead to a flaming balrog eventually. The Manhattan canyon trails, ridge trail, star mine loop were all good trails. It was also quite fun roasting our dinner at the swallows’ nests.
These are just the memories of home growing up. All the camping trips to MacKerriker and Saddlebag and Red’s will have to wait for another reminiscing session.
Matthew 2004

Attack of the Crohn's

Attack of the Crohn's
(well at least something similar)
Or
Mosquito bait--ooh ha ha!

Ah, the mission. What a wonderful time of learning and growth, serving and love, and, (if you are lucky enough to go to a third world country), interesting parasites and other various and sundry diseases. My mission had all of these and more, so much so that at times I was brought to ponder how much my cup was really running over, especially with those last two items. This story is about one such occasion. My companion and I were spending most of our time in an out of the way area filled with mud holes and shacks. The area we were working in was about fifty minutes walking from our apartment and in order to get there we needed to climb up and over a pretty large hill. Going to our area the hill sloped up and up, while on the back side it dropped precipitously into what is known in Brazil as a “favela” and would be best described here as a very poor neighborhood. (see diagram 1 below)

  Diagram 1
Well one day we were hard at work and we walked through an area with a bunch of mosquitoes. At this point in the story we need a little background information. We lived on the fourth floor of an apartment building and right next to a river. (See diagram 2)

Diagram 2

I use the term “river” loosely here seeing as how it was really a poop infused mosquito breeding ground. However I am quite sure that it is a beautiful river outside of town, so river will suffice. Living so close to the “river” we had a constant supply of mosquitoes in our house. So many in fact that, after a long nights sleep, our sheets would be spotted with blood where mosquitoes had been

Another diagram

crushed and behind the fan in our room would be a layer of mosquitoes at least a centimeter thick. (yup, another diagram) We had tried everything from burning these nasty smelling (as well as toxic and carcinogenic for sure) mosquito repellant uh… burny things, to simply hiding under our sheets. Well, that’s actually all we tired until the mission got around to buying us some proper plug in mosquito repellant things. Anyway, lets get back to the story at hand. If you will remember my companion and I were walking in a mosquito infested area. (Yeah I really don’t know what this little aside added to the story but it took a while to write and draw the diagram so it stays. If nothing else it goes to establish the conditions that lead to the rest of this story.) And without further ado, here is the rest of the story.
I had an odd thought as we were walking through a fairly dense cloud of the little buggers. It went like this. “Man that would suck if I got Dengue.” I know pretty profound huh. Well it was odd seeing as how I slept in a veritable cloud of the winged beasts every night.
Fast forward to the next day. We were back in our area and another grueling day was about to come to a close. So we started back up the monster hill to go back to our house. When we were about half way up the hill I noticed that I was getting tired climbing it. Which was odd seeing as how I had been in the area for a while and the hill never gave me any problems before. We continued on. On the other side I noticed that my eyes hurt pretty bad. Further on I started needing to go to the bathroom pretty bad. Taken altogether these symptoms were adding up to something and when I got home that something hit me… (see diagram 4)

Diagram 4

…Like a ton of bricks dropped on my back actually. That night was a tough one. I didn’t sleep a wink and was moaning and tossing all night. You see, I had contracted dengue fever (sometimes lovingly referred to as break bone fever) from a mosquito in my area.
Let me describe to you the details. My eyes felt like they were going to explode out of my head. My back hurt so bad that I (honestly) thought that I had brwould never be over the pain. I had no strength and threw up quite often. (See Diagram 5)

Diagram 5

But the best part by far was the bowel movements. (Editor’s warning: some of the following descriptions may not be suitable for all readers. If you want to read it you will have to decipher my secret code. Ok just highlight the following text if you want the gory details.)
IT was nothing but mucous. Seriously what was left over in the bowl looked like an elephant had blown its nose. Just like snot or the stuff in the back or your throat when you are sick. For seven days it was like that and I had to take a shower every time I went to the bathroom cause it was so raw after a while and toilet paper had really met its match with this stuff. One touch and it was totally saturated! Good thing was that it didn’t really hurt. Till about day 8. Then it turned hard again and bloody. Never has a bowel movement been so much torture. This was more of an infection after the fact though and only partly related to the dengue.
Ok it’s over. Anyway you get the idea.
All of these symptoms could have been alleviated to some degree if my retarded district leader had gotten the details right from our mission presidents wife (who was an RN). He, however, sadly did not do so. You see the mixup came when he told me that I wasn’t supposed to use Tylenol. This mixup could have occurred for one of two reasons. First, perhaps he is simply an idiot, and got the message wrong. Second, he was jealous of all Americans. I’d like to think it was the first one myself (note: I said I’d like to). Needless to say I was very perturbed to find out that I had suffered more than I needed to. He did however get a part of the message right and told me that I needed to drink water with salt and sugar in multiple times a day to keep some minerals and food in me. And I tried to do just that, it was so nasty though, that I simply couldn’t.
Speaking of food, I had no appetite for about a week and really wasted away quite a bit during this ordeal. So there I was for a week straight tossing and turning, moaning and whimpering, taking my companions pillow to put under my back and taking showers ten times a day or more. My companion probably loved the first few days cause he got to say with me all day but soon they put me with another Elder that couldn’t work due to his foot. You see the day he got into Brazil, or shortly thereafter, he got bit by a bug and his foot and it had swollen up to become an elephantine monstrosity. I’ll spare you all the diagram.
Nevertheless, all things must come to an end sooner or later in this life and so too did my fever. So it was that 8 days of bedridden torture and 20 or so pounds later, I was feeling better. The mission president’s wife told me that I’d better not eat anything greasy or heavy at first so I went out and got a hamburger and fries. Hey, it was the first time that I’d had an appetite in 8 days and it sounded oh so yummy. It was. So ends the story of my near death experience from my mission. It is a pretty good story looking back at it now. Although, I’d never want to do it again.

2001: A SPACE MEMORY

2001: A SPACE MEMORY

Ok, here is a great memory from about 5 or so years ago…well at least I think it is pretty cool. I was a freshman in college. But before we get into the story we need a little background information. In 1977 one of the greatest movies of all time was presented to the world. Yep you guessed it: Star Wars episode IV A New Hope. Don’t let the name fool any of you young ones reading this story, it was actually a good movie. Yes little ones, Star Wars movies were actually good movies. Before the Dark Times, before the Menace.
With that background we can return to the story at hand. The special edition of Star Wars came out my freshman year and seeing as how my roommate (Jared Teter), Aaron, Dan and I were rabid Star Wars fans, (ok, Dan just came along for the ride) we decided to get tickets and watch all three of the movies on opening night. The problem was that everyone else had that same plan and so in order to accomplish our designs we had to wait in line. So we got in line around 4:00 pm. The box office opened at 11:00 so we only had approximately 19 hours to go. We were all laying in the street in our sleeping bags and passing the time by playing risk and watching movies on a large T.V., which was hooked up to a generator. (Are you beginning to see the mental health issues that surround Star Wars fans??). Well we survived the freezing February night and got tickets in the morning. Mission accomplished, the movie was great and we saw it on the opening night. The story however does not end here, it only begins…as we entered the theater we beheld riches exceeding all that we had ever imagined, and we could imagine quite a bit. Window stickers of the great Darth Vader three feet tall, Yoda, ewoks (ewoks suck), everything was there! Cardboard cutouts of the entire cast! They would all be ours, oh yes, they would all be ours. But how? They were guarded by the theater’s evil imperial guards whose constant vigil would make capturing the treasure as hard as capturing the secret plans of the original Death Star! And as we all know many Bothan Spies died in that endeavor. Which of us was likewise disposable? But, they would be ours somehow, and at any cost.
It is possible that our lust for the paraphernalia clouded our reason because the last of the three movies was about to open and we found ourselves ticketless. So there we were on opening night frantically trying to buy tickets from people in line and thereby get into the last showing. Finally one of us had the bright idea to see if there were any tickets left in the box office. And lo and behold, there were! It was a miracle, and so it was that we found ourselves in the last showing of The Return of the Jedi. After the show we were in a good mood as we came out of the theater, but our jovial mood soon turned into elation as we entered the lobby and found that the guards had abandoned their posts! Nobody was guarding the prized treasure! From this point on in the story all parties will be referred to by pseudonyms to protect the identities of the guilty. One of us, who will be known as “Tared Jeter”, went to work immediately. He began trying to caress R2D2 off of the huge cardboard display. He was thus engaged when “Aarastas” ran up and grabbed Yoda by the ear and yanked him off with one deft motion. Tared Jeter, inspired by this new and efficient tactic, yanked R2 from the display and then, using skills only a true Jedi can possess, leapt onto the candy counter and sprinted to the window where he obtained the window stickers of Darth Vader, Yoda and the Gay Ewok. And then as soon as the thieving rampage had begun it was over and they were gone. At this point Natthew Mielsen played the role of sentinel and made sure that the evil guards were not pursuing our heroes. He relayed this information to Tared and Aarastas. They then walked home without incident and Darth Vader adorned their window for the rest of the year. It had been a perfect tactical strike and nobody ever knew who had performed it. Post Script.
Actually that last statement was not entirely true. Two years later Natthew found himself in Brazil far from the crime and far from anyone who could possibly know of it. Or so he thought. In Brazil he met a boy named Vince Penman who had years earlier lived in Provo and had been guarding a great treasure in a movie theater that had been stolen one night when he and his fellow guards had failed to keep their vigil. He was especially devastated by the loss because if he had been successful in guarding the treasure much of it would have become his and it was for this very purpose that he had gotten a job as a guard in the first place. Penman soon learned of the great crime and that Natthew had been involved. However, at this time Natthew was Penman’s boss of sorts and so all was forgiven. It is now 5 years later and Yoda still watches over our apartment from the wall. I think that he likes his new home.

Fishy Food

Matthew’s Memory
or
Fishy Food

Well, I know that I have had a lot of experiences in my life, that isn’t the problem. The problem is being able to elucidate just one. It’s not that picking one specific experience is a difficult task in and of itself, but that through the years all the individual experiences have somehow run together to make one big memory; a memory that really makes up who I am. For example I have a memory of camping, a memory of hiking, a memory of home, a memory of friends and family and so on and so on. But if you were to ask me about one specific camping story, one hiking story, one whatever story I might not be able to pull up the specific file in which the memory was stored. So it would be easier to just fill up a page with things I remember doing year after year after year until they became ingrained on my memory as a generic experience but I prefer not to. Instead I will rack my brain and try to remember one of those elusive memories of an actual one-time experience. So here we go.
The memory takes place in the not too distant past at Red’s Meadow, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains near the California-Nevada border. I’m sure you all know the place. It started one morning very early, at the crack of dawn to be more precise, well maybe before dawn because of that big old mountain that blocks the sun till about 10:00 or so. Anyway, it was before anyone else was awake, all the tribe members were slumbering soundly. I was among those happily oblivious slumberers until the tribal chief (read Dad) came to my tent or whatever it was I was sleeping in (I told you I am not very good with memories) and asked me if I wanted to go fishing to acquire sustenance for the entire tribe. I said that I did and so the two of us left. We went out of camp and crossed the great road to the path that leads through the woods. We walked along the path where the barbed-wire fence is off to the left, you know the one where Joseph got his shin scar. Then we crossed the log bridges and soon we came upon the quasi-secret sapling that marks the depart-from-the-trail-point leading to the quasi-secret path that’s leads to the quasi-secret swimming hole. Then we began fishing on the river. It was a beautiful high sierra summer morning, the clouds were white the sky a bright blue, the sun was yellow and the evergreens were well you guessed it, green. We did pretty well that morning catching about 9 fish, actually I remember that we caught exactly nine, including a 14 and a half and 15 inch fish; and that is pretty big for a mountain stream in that area. Actually it is the biggest fish that I have ever caught up there but now I am just rambling so let’s get back to the story. The fishes didn’t come easily however, especially the 15 inch one that Dad caught, oh, it fought all the way in. For all three grueling feet and 3 long seconds of the fight between man and beast the water was roiling as the fearsome fish struggled for its life. If you couldn’t tell I am being sarcastic; that fish came very easily, Dad just dropped his line in a hole near the bank under a overhanging tree and presto, a second or two later there was one more dead fish. Not all nine, however, came so easily and despite our superior skill there were a few snags and even a lost lure if I remember correctly. All early morning we roamed up the river in search of our elusive prey, well I guess that it wasn’t too elusive because we did get nine of the moronic beasts to fall for our ruse of fluorescent power bait, flies and lures. We walked upstream pretty much until it became difficult to go any further. The stream takes a right turn as a small white waterfall comes cascading down slippery black rocks and adds its water to that of the great river. At that point the trees on one side make access to the river difficult and the cliff from which the small waterfall springs makes it impossible so we turned back, fishing all the way down to the swimming hole. We then followed our secret path back to camp and found signs of stirring so the chief began to cook the newly dead fish for the whole tribe. Our quest for food was over and the tribe members were happy, and soon began to find various ways to expend the energy received from the sumptuous repast.
I know I could have related any number of other experiences but this one is the one I remembered this time and is somewhat representative of all the great times we had and memories we made at Red’s Meadow. I suppose that since this will be a recurring assignment I’ll leave the rest of the memories for another time. I know you can hardly wait for next Christmas so you can hear about another great Nielsen adventure.