A different New Year’s Eve – 332

The thing with Aaron and Mitch did teach me a lot, but there were still plenty of things I had not learned, and I was still capable of not only making new mistakes but also repeating old ones.

I came home from my mission on August 3rd, 1994. I had been in Fresno and Modesto working with Laotian refugees. I don’t suppose it was the easiest adjustment. First of all, it was very hard to find anyone to speak Lao to here. The refugees tend to settle in the same areas. The San Joaquin Valley, where I had been, has a large Laotian population, as well as quite a few Cambodian and Hmong. Around here, it is mainly Vietnamese, some Cambodian, and also a lot of Korean, though that is coming from a completely different part of Asia. I can say hello and goodbye in Cambodian, and hello and that I speak Lao, not Hmong, in Hmong, but that’s about it. (Lao is very similar to Thai, so I can understand it, but if I speak it I will probably sound uneducated, and trying to read it gives me a headache.)

In addition, money was really tight. The realization that I was supposed to go on a mission came while my mother and I were fasting for my father to find a job, and he was still going from temp job to temp job over two years later. He took a two-month assignment in Albuquerque, and while he was gone I was making the house payment and doing other things, making it hard to save up to go back to school.

Socially, I did get to go out more in groups, and I made some friends, but I still did not really have any confidence with guys, and chose poor strategies. This New Years Eve disappointment actually started in November. The Dayton branch was having a weekend conference for singles, and a group of us went. Like most singles conferences, the ratio of male to female was not promising, but I had noticed one good-looking guy.

There was a dance, and as a slow song came on (I believe it was Mr Bigg’s I’m the One That Wants To Be With You), and a bunch of us were lamenting having no one to dance with, I got us to kind of hold shoulders and sway in a line. I am a problem solver. Anyway, this guy was not dancing with anyone else, and the line got his attention, so he came over and said something, and I offered to dance with him and disloyally deserted my line. Perhaps I deserved what followed.

Honestly, that dance was fine but I still had my old concern about pressing my luck, so after ascertaining that he was going to be at the New Year’s dance, I didn’t really talk to him the rest of the weekend.

New Year’s Eve, I walked into the dance, saw him, went over to say hi, and asked him how he was.

“Great. I’m engaged.”
“I’m so happy for you!”

That was a lie. I was actually completely mortified. Then to top it off, they had picked a date in June, and I had always wanted to get married in June. And with the thing I said about June weddings, he totally got the Seven Brides for Seven Brothers reference.

But don’t worry; I had lots of other male interaction that evening. I lent a listening ear to one guy who was having girl trouble, and offered him reassurance. Oh, and I met a lawyer from Eastern Oregon who figured if he didn’t find the girl that evening, he was quitting the search. I’m no expert on flirting, but it’s not a great pickup line if you sound simultaneously cynical and desperate, though the real turn-off with him was that he was kind of racist, and it was clear after one song.

It wasn’t a complete loss. I got my first standup comedy routine out of it.

Did I think about Mitch? Of course. I tried to find him, and shortly after I got back I found out he was in California now, where I had just left. I spoke to him on the phone once, and it was perfectly friendly, but he was just never giving off the vibe of being in love with me, and I would totally have needed a declaration of love from him to say anything.

One thing that had come up in multiple conversations was that he never really seemed to get that my mission was just going to be for eighteen months and then I would have a regular life. I thought I explained it, but then he would always be surprised when I mentioned coming back. He could have thought I was off limits, but I always just thought he was not interested. Still, I didn’t obsess too badly. I still needed to finish school, and there was always something that needed doing. And that last part is still true.