Christmas Program1974

Today I was adding a little memory to my personal history. It is a section in which I talk about things that were kind of unique to my childhood -- things that don't exist today like xray machines in shoe stores so mothers could see how their kids shoes fit, and grocery wagons (miniature grocery stores on flatbed trucks that drove around town to accommodate mothers who didn't have cars), and two-piece nylons with garter belts. The one I was remembering today happened to include a Christmas story, so thought it might be fun. Here it is:

"Another thing that you never see today was that our chapels had “cry” rooms. They were small rooms separated from the chapel by glass and were usually at the back of the chapel or sometimes on the second floor looking down into the chapel. It was a place where mothers could take crying babies or noisy children and still see and hear what was going on. When Randy was a Sunbeam in Junior Sunday School our chapel in Provo had an upstairs cry room. Heidi was a baby, and the week of the Christmas program must have been the one time in her entire life that she was fussy. I was sitting up in the cry room with her when the Junior Sunday School children marched in to sing their songs for the Christmas program. They all walked in reverently with their arms folded – all but Randy, that is. He followed directly behind his teacher who was one of the elderly (and more rotund) sisters in the ward. He was wearing his little red sweater shorts with the matching red and white striped cardigan and entered with a high-stepping march, keeping perfect time to the music being played by beating the rhythm on his teacher’s rear end. Oh dear, I was too far away to do anything about it. All the children lined up on the stand, and the Sunbeams were lifted up to stand on the small wooden pews that had been carried in from the Junior Sunday School room. Randy was front and center. Having already caught the attention of most of the congregation upon entering the chapel, most of them were still looking at him when he happened to look up and saw me sitting in the cry room. Not realizing that there were speakers in the cry room he belted out a greeting to me that was loud enough to penetrate the glass, accompanied by exuberant waving. Everyone laughed out loud which startled Randy. He tried to step back, but the back of the little pew caught him just at the knees, flipping him right over the back of the bench. The only thing that could be seen of him was two little legs sticking straight up in the air. It caused quite a commotion. That may have been the very week that the church decided to do away with cry rooms."

And before you say anything about my hair, just remember that "The bigger the hair, the closer to Heaven."