Do not regret growing older.

Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many.- unknown

Josie posted this quote on her Facebook page yesterday. I don't know why she did or what was going through her mind at the time, but it is pretty appropriate for this week.

On April 6, Patrick went with a group of friends to play Magic. The next day, the same friends were playing a game online, but one of them was not playing. Another one of them joked that the only reason he wouldn't play was if he was dead.

And he was dead. So it wasn't a very good joke. Patrick found out on Sunday that on April 6, his friend drove home (after what Patrick thought was a fun night where everyone was getting along happily, and this particular friend seemed to be doing pretty good) and killed himself in his garage. Don't know the details; they don't really matter. His father found him after it was too late.

So Patrick went to his friend's funeral on Tuesday. He isn't a big fan of funerals, but he felt he needed to go, and he was glad he went, but having your friend die suddenly and unexpectedly, especially by his own hand when you were totally not expecting it--makes for a hard week. Growing older is a privilege that has been denied to this young man. We could say he denied himself of the privilege, but we can't judge--we don't know what was in his heart and mind.

Last night Josie and three of her friends were going on a double date. Going to go bowling in Provo. Twenty minutes after they left the house, Josie called me, and her voice sounded a little funny. She was abnormally giggly, but the giggling sounded close to crying. So I was worried. They had been in a car accident, but they were all okay--the people in both cars.

Josie later said that she was in the back seat and having a conversation with her date. The girl in the front said "AJ, a car!" That pulled Josie's attention and she looked out the side window--the window beside her--and there was a car. She had time to register that before she thought, "Okay, we have been hit."

The side of the car where AJ and Josie were sitting got smashed pretty badly, but wonder of wonders, they walked away from it. They could so easily have been carried away on stretchers, but fortunately they were okay. The privilege of growing older has been extended to these teens, and we feel so blessed for that.

AJ's dad had loaned his van to his son. Josie thinks that, had they been in AJ's much smaller car, the two of them who had been sitting on the left side of the car, Josie and AJ, would have fared less well. AJ's dad also impresses me because he told the kids to carry on with their date, since the car was still drive-able, and he trusted his son, even after the crash, to do the driving. 

When Nancy had her accident years ago, I made the mistake of not making her drive immediately afterwards. That was not a good thing. (I should have listened to my mother, who told me to get her back behind the wheel right away.) Nancy was a little alarmed when I told her Josie had been in an accident, mostly because of the quote on her Facebook page, which seemed "woefully foreshadowing" to Nancy.

So, I am really, really happy that Josie and her friends walked away, a little sore and a little shook up and probably a little bit in shock, but alive to enjoy the privilege of growing a little bit older.

End of another semester = Time for a gamelan performance

Every semester, Gamelan Bintang Wahyu presents the repertoire we have learned in some sort of performance. In the fall, we perform with the rest of the percussion ensembles on campus. In the Spring, we usually do something on our own. One year, we entertained at Holi (The Festival of Colors) at the Hari Krishna temple in Spanish Fork. Last year, we participated in a recital -- this year, for the first time, we had a full-on concert in the Spring. Since we were performing alone, Jeremy asked the Arts Management people to relax the no-under-six-years-old policy, since it is not very Balinese to exclude children. So, we had a wonderful concert last night, and children were welcome!

In the early afternoon, my co-worker Janet came into my office and said "You're in the paper!" She showed me page three of the Daily Universe, and there was a picture of our whole gamelan group from two years ago. I read that page, and then worked backwards to the Front Page, where the story started, and saw this picture:


Me and Josie! This was a studio shot from April 2009, when about six of us and Dr. Grimshaw got together to take some publicity shots for the group. Josie and I were the only "girls" who went to the shoot--and they certainly have gotten a lot of use out of the picture. Not my favorite picture, but I guess there is some appeal in it for someone. Not only was it on the front page of the paper this year, but on the plasma screen by the ticket office, on the website for Arts Management--and though I have not personally verified it, apparently it appears in a promotional brochure for the School of Fine Arts and Communication.

So...last night at dress rehearsal, Josie said, "Mom, I forgot to wear a black T-shirt!" She had on a black tank-top to wear under the blue uniform, but we were going to be wearing black T-shirts and black and white plaid for kechak and joged. I realized the bookstore was still open, so I just excused myself from rehearsal and ran--in costume, looking exactly like in the picture above--to the store. I quickly found and purchased a shirt, and was hurrying back, and not very many people had stared at me. But one couple, walking hand in hand, were just staring, so I smiled and said, "It's a costume--come to our concert tonight!" And one of them said, "Oh, we are coming; we have tickets--but aren't you in the ad on the plasma screen by the ticket office?"

Wow, I am famous!--well, my PICTURE is. No one knows who I am. If they realized that neither Josie nor I are actually BYU students, I wonder if we would be featured so much? Well, probably doesn't matter--they just like the picture!

When I got back to rehearsal, we practiced and had photos taken and changed costumes and had more photos taken and then changed costumes again. But Michael W. ran out without a costume on, just in shorts and a T-shirt. When he came back, he said, "I just met President Uchtdorf--looking like THIS!" And he gestured ruefully at his attire.  Soon Tate (13) and Aajay (10) ran in--they were wearing their kechak costumes. (Similar to these we wore in 2009.)

Tate said, "We just met President Uchtdorf! And he shook our hands and talked to us!" I said, "Hey...you are in your costumes! Did you invite him to our performance?" Tate said, "No...but we probably should have! 'Cause I think he was probably wondering why we were wearing skirts!"

Well, I won't retell what Nancy wrote. You can find it here: http://www.heissatopia.com/2011/04/gamelan.html

One more funny thing I don't want to forget: as we were cleaning up at the end of the night, Tate was still wearing his "skirt." I said, "Hey, Tate, can I take your costume? We want to get them put away." He sighed and stood up and started to remove it, saying "Sometimes it's hard for a man to let go of his skirt."

And the last one: I was peeking out of the wings to see if family and friends were  there--some had tickets on one side, and some had tickets on the other side. I noticed that my son David was sitting by a young man who kind of looked (with my poor vision) like he might be the son of Gail, a librarian friend--and his name is David. And next to both of them was Donna Dalton. So randomly, three people I know but who didn't know each other were sitting beside each other! Later, Donna's husband David came in and changed seats with her--so side by side were three Davids I know but who didn't know each other! Random!--and they know each other now...