2014-01-08: Beehive, MiaMaid, Laurel

I have related in various more-or-less public forums the True Story about marching into the bishop’s office when I turned 12 and demanding that he make me a deacon. Less known is how not too long thereafter, I marched into the same bishop’s office to demand that the name “Beehive” be changed to something less stupid.

I was a Beehive, as were all 12- and 13-year-old active Mormon girls up until 2019.† According to LDS Inc. (I mean, lds.org), “the beehive was a symbol of harmony, cooperation, and work for the early pioneers of the Church. Beehive was also the first name by which young women were known. Beehives today learn to work together in cooperation and harmony as they strengthen their faith….” Um, OK, but it [was] still stupid. However, what I want to relate is how much I liked my Beehive teacher Carol, and… how apparently terrified she was of me at the beginning. This was her first real calling in our ward, and possibly her first real calling ever as a relatively new convert, and she was supposed to deal with know-it-all and highly opinionated me? But we became good friends and went to the “Know Your Religion” lecture series together and had deep discussions and all. I wrote to her while she was on her mission to Chile … and receiving back the letters I sent her (illustrated! augmented with humorous doggerel!) was a valuable gift to me. I saw Carol in 2012 while visiting my folks… but more on that another time.

Mia Maid as a 14- and 15-year-old… well, at least it was singular. Mia (pronounced like “Maya”) came from MIA — Mutual Improvement Association, which is what the program was called when I was a Beehive, I think. (What to call the youth programs became something of an issue to Salt Lake, given the various permutations over the years — APYW, APYW MIA, Young Women — current name… and Aaronic Priesthood. —Insert major eye-roll here. Oh well.) I didn’t like Mia Maids nearly as well, partly because of the teacher(s) who totally emphasized a lot of girly-girl things. I cannot say I wasn’t interested in certain aspects of the various dating-related lessons, but I was not especially cooperative and I am sure I gave the teachers, Judy in particular, a fair bit of grief. (I was also a pretty awful home teachee during this time.)

This was also a time of Chastity Nights and chewed-gum analogies, something which I will expand on some other time. But it all struck me as perfectly normal and right when I was living through it, despite how much it makes me cringe today.

I never was really a Laurel (16- & 17-year-olds, and now we’re back to yet another weird name), which at the time I kind of regretted because the teacher (Toni) was someone I admired and everyone, my sister included, had really loved her as a teacher. But not long after I turned 16, I joined the So. Calif. Mormon Choir, which held its rehearsals on Wednesday evenings — the same night as APYW-bla-bla. I tried going to the other ward’s Laurel class, but there was already not a whole lot of love lost between the kids in T ward and R3 ward to begin with (fierce high school rivalries didn’t help matters), and I didn't enjoy it at all. So I stopped going, and thankfully neither my parents nor anyone at church hassled me about it. 

This all said, I mostly enjoyed my time in APYW, in large measure because of the YW leaders. I don’t know who was in charge of what, but I remember specific people spearheading specific activities. There was Ruth (“Mama Gort” of “Gort's Warts” — where the “gort” came from, I do not know), who ferried us to our church ball games. There was Linda E, who at one point also was the coach of our basketball (and possibly also volleyball?) team(s). I don't recall that she did a whole lot of coaching per se, but she stuffed us all into her souped-up Rambler and took us to and from the games. (When I say “souped-up Rambler,”" I mean that her husband had put some kind of turbo-charged V8 engine into the thing, and it was her rather odd husband and Linda’s delight to challenge all comers to drag race. Seriously.)

There was Bee, married to… well, he was an inconsiderate and self-centered twit back then, and while he's now apparently quite wealthy, he’s still a twit (of an extreme winger variety) — anyway, in between popping out quite a few babies, Bee led the YW, assisted by her sister-in-law Dee (sister of the twit). Dee was crazy funny, crazy energetic, also married to something of a twit, also popping out babies (Bee and Dee lived in the same subsidized housing for the first several years). Dee at least, and maybe Bee as well, accompanied us to at least one girls’ camp outing at Mud Flats (my favorite activity amidst huge boredom — girls' camp was a poor substitute for Girl Scouts: rolling dried cow pies down into the arroyo; no joke). I have a vivid memory of Dee driving one car (Val’s VW beetle?) and Bee? driving another: we are roaring down the highway (14? 395?) and the cars are side by side trying to get close enough for us to pass strawberry twizzlers from one vehicle to the other. The insane exchange was a success (just staying alive was a success). Maniacal laughter all around.

I went off to college and not long thereafter came the bit o’ news that Dee, after she and her husband took in a woman in her 20s who had no place to go (I don’t recall all of the details)… well, Dee left her husband and ran off with the woman. (I don’t know where or with whom the kiddies ended up at that juncture, though ultimately they ended up with Dee). For all I know, Dee and this woman are still together. I do know that Dee lives in Salt Lake, and so I wonder if she and the woman got married during the recent all-too-brief window when it was possible to do so. [Update: Yes, they seem to still be together; marital status: unknown. I also know that her twit brother does not think very highly of her, though there was at least a bit of détente over the years (conceivably now blown to smithereens over gay marriage in Utah).]

Given what a Righteous Creature I was when Dee knew me, I imagine she would view any communication from me with great suspicion. But it would be interesting indeed to see what all happened to her over the years. As indeed it would be to chat with some of the other folks. Of the various personalities I knew among the women leaders/teachers during my day, the only one I’ve well and truly lost track of is Linda of Rambler fame. Maybe I’ll look a little harder for her. I wonder what I will find.

†Per change announced at October 2019 General Conference. Bye-bye, Beehives (etc.)!