Fuzzy memories

I'm getting so damn old there aren't many memories from my childhood left.  I think I've blocked many things out because I simply couldn't process them and the rest are fading.  But one memory from my freshman (and only) year at BYU is still crystal clear. The very first fast-and-testimony meeting in my student ward got me thinking.  I don't remember what was said but I left thinking, "I need to confess to the bishop".  I really didn't think it through properly because it didn't occur to me that I could be kicked out of BYU.  No, I just knew it was something I "needed" to do. 

I made an appointment with the bishop, who sold garage doors when he wasn't dealing with the hundreds of teenagers under his authority.  I confessed my sin of having premarital sex and he told me that because of the seriousness of the transgression a bishop's court needed to be held.  I was a petrified barely-eighteen-year-old girl and I willingly walked into a room full of older, balding men in suits and white shirts and proceeded to answer questions about how many times this serious transgression occurred and over what period of time, etc.  So many questions from these old dudes.  I certainly didn't want to give specifics on the first time in his sister's bedroom (and the subsequent hideously painful "honeymoon cystis") or the attempt at fucking in the pool in his backyard while his parents were in the house  Or the various rooms in my house and, of course, my car.  There was a LOT of empty desert to drive into.  Yeah, I seriously transgressed. A lot. And I had to tell them about it.  So my stomach is churning, I'm sweating and attempting to answer these probing questions when the bishop asked, "Have you always been tall?". What.  The.  Hell.  And then I noticed.  This was a room full of short, bald men. If I had known then what I know these 30 years later I would have walked out of that room and left BYU and all that shit behind.  I was baring my soul to a bunch of short, bald men and letting them judge me. 

I was eventually told that they had decided, out of the goodness of their hearts, to merely put me on church probation.  I did not have to leave BYU in disgrace.  Of course, that bishop called the bishop in my home ward who proceeded to call MY FATHER who proceeded to call me.  So much for that confidential shit.  I think of my 18-year-old daughter going through something like that and I want to punch someone.  Preferably short, bald men. Ah! An epiphany!  That's why I don't like short, bald men!  This random farting really is helping.