Stand Up

So I wrote this whole script (and brought a blazer!) to do stand up at the talent show last weekend, and it didn't work out. Oh well. At least I wrote the script! It's all from my life, seriously! Here you go:

Good evening all

If my high school self could see me now, she’d roll over in her grave! I never used to talk.

I’m wearing my blazer, I think it’s the law that you have to wear a blazer if you do stand up.

If you guys don’t laugh at my jokes, then I’ll have to start dancing and you don’t want to see that.

So you might be asking, Liz, why are you here?

I’m here to land me a man, of course. I gotta shut up the old ladies back home. You know, the ones that like to come up to you and ask if you’ve found Mr. Right…and they’re serious.
I’ll preface this story by telling you that once upon a time I was 23 and I had only been home from my mission for a month and a half. And I got asked that point blank- “Have you found Mr. Right?” And I started to laugh and then I realized: She was serious. And I had to be honest and tell her no- I’d only been home for a month and a half…I was still in Sister Missionary Mode where boys are icky!

And then she looked at me and just sighed in disappointment. And then she started to babble on and say that that was ok, I didn’t have to marry and that I could be like Shari Dew. Now, don’t get me wrong because Shari Dew is an amazing woman and I should hope to be half the woman that she is, but this is not exactly what you want to hear when you are 23.

Soooo….I’m getting to that age:
The age where the kids you babysat are now getting married.
The age where the kids that I visited in the hospital when they were born are now getting married.
The age where you have to start buying your own wedding presents- cause sometimes you need a blender and no one has bought ya one. I’m thinking I should start a trend of showers for single gals
And in all reality I’m not that old…I fully meet the requirements to be at a YSA event. For a good while longer, too. But all these whippersnappers getting married sure makes me feel old. It doesn’t help that I go to college with kids ten years younger than I am…because in my tech class my teacher will ask things like “What is your first memory of a computer?” and the other kids in class remember things like Windows 97.Meanwhile, I remember DOS! And floppy disks! You had to type stuff in when you started up your computer and everything.

I’m getting to the age where being the Crazy Cat Lady is starting to look good. My friend and I have decided on an arrangement that we’ll still care about getting married for a certain allotment of time. We’ll be sociable. We’ll wear makeup and pantyhose and heels. And we’ll worry about having cute clothes. But once that period of time is over, we’ll move in together and we’ll get a whole bunch of cats.

It must be so much fun to be the crazy cat lady because you don’t have to care what society thinks anymore. You don’t have to brush your hair. You don’t have to diet. Your uniform is sweats and crocs and a shirt that says something like “No outfit is complete without a little cat hair.”

Watch, it’ll be after I let loose and become Crazy Cat Lady that I’ll find my very own Crazy Cat Guy and settle down. You see those crazy couples at Wal-Mart, truly there is someone for everyone.

So, I was in Young Women’s when I was a younger, and then I graduated from high school and went on to other things. I served in Primary, I served a mission, I served some more in Primary, and I served in Relief Society. Basically, everywhere except Young Women’s. And then, exactly ten years later, I got put back in Young Women’s as a leader. And I figured out why:

I flunked Young Women’s.

I was out of Young Women’s for ten whole years and I didn’t get married and have children. I flunked. So they put me back in. And I love it. I have more in common with the girls than the Relief Society sisters anyhow.

A while ago I was cleaning and I found The List. And all you girls out there know what I’m talking about. When you have the marriage lesson in YW, they make you write a list of all the qualities that you want in a spouse. And I am proud to say that I had a very good list, nothing too silly there. But I wound up tossing it because I think I know better now what I’m looking for than my 14 year old self. It’s pretty funny now being the one to teach the marriage lesson, but I didn’t make them write a list.

I spend a lot of my time at youth activities, and at the last youth conference that I chaperoned, one of the girls that I brought met this boy that she really liked. And here’s the kicker: he liked her back just as much. And this was only a couple of hours into the conference. I was like “How does that happen? Can I take notes?” I think they’re teaching me more than I’m teaching them.

So, I used to work at Bed Bath & Beyond back in the day. I used to be the person that set up registries for engaged couples. That’s me, always the registrar, never the bride. I met all kinds of couples, some were very nice. And then there were the ones where you were like “Really?”
When you saw some of the last names that these girls would be getting, you knew it had to be true love cause there’s no other way that that was going to happen. My other friend and I have an agreement that if either of us gets a new stupid last name, that the other one can laugh at it and we won’t care. You can laugh at my stupid new last name, I won’t even care.

So I have some tips for the guys out there. Kind of a Public Service Announcement. Am I picking on the guys? Maybe a bit, but I’m trying to help. I know a lot of really nice guys out there and I want them to be happy and find a nice girl and settle down. Likewise, I’m hoping that if I help the guys out, then I’ll also be helping the girls out cause there’s a lot of nice girls that I know that want them to settle down and be happy too. And there’s a bit of a selfish reason for wanting to help the guys out cause then that will help me out. So ladies, it’s once for you and twice for me. Now, is anyone perfect? No, we all make dumb mistakes. One of the last conversations I had with a guy wound up being about how I needed to go use the little girl’s room. Cause that’s hot, right?

So I won’t call these rules, because guys, you just might find a girl that isn’t taken aback by these things, but odds are these suggestions will help you with the ladies. So we’ll call them “guidelines” like on Pirates. And I kid you not that the things that I talk about are true. They really happened.

• 
  Guideline Number One: Guys, when you’re asking me out, you don’t have to mention that your suit really really needs dry-cleaning. I don’t need to know that. When you show up on my doorstep in your clean, freshly pressed suit, I will pretend that it has always been like that and has never ever been in a smelly heap in the back of your closet.
• 
  Guys, when you ask us to hang out at your place after church, you should be able to tell us how to get there. You just came from there.

• Don’t ask us out to make sure that you really like your steady girl. We don’t like that.

• Don’t ask us out in front of everyone when Sunday School is getting out. Find someplace more appropriate.

• When you’re in a romantic situation out on a balcony overlooking the Puget Sound and it’s all beautiful with the bridges and the ferry boats all lit up, now is not the time to ask me if I had weird bugs on my mission. And by the way, I served in Connecticut, so no terribly weird bugs.
• I’m a firm believer that whoever asks for the date should pay for it. If you ask me to a semiformal dance and we’re out at a nice place beforehand, after dinner is not the time to ask me if I want you to pay for my meal. Especially not when we’re doubling with another couple where there’s no question that that guy’s paying for his date.

• Us girls don’t want to go on dates that are more appropriate for youth. One guy was all flirty with me and I’m thinking “I might get some free dinner out of this”. Well instead of being asked out, I got handed a business card. This guy and his best friend had this dating “business” where I was supposed to invite a galpal over and provide some food and they’d cook and clean and entertain. On the card was their contact info and a photo of them in white shirts and ties and aprons holding cooking utensils. It was the funniest card ever, and I was so sad that I lost it. This whole scenario was never going to happen since I lived in a tiny place with my family and had no privacy, not to mention that I didn’t have a galpal that I would subject that to. It also made me the “guy” having to set it all up. I guess these guys were scared of rejection so this was easier, but the irony is that if this guy had just said “Liz, would you like to go have dinner with me?” then the answer probably would have been yes. And who knows- maybe things would have worked out and I wouldn’t be here tonight and I’d have a stupid new last name.

• Please don't call my house at 8am...on a Saturday! I wasn't home anyhow, I was a working girl.

• Please don't "borrow" someone's child from daycare to show me that you're good with kids...I don't want you to go to prison!

So guys, it doesn’t have to be that hard. All you have to do is find a nice girl that you would like to know better and find out her name. And here’s the hard part: You have to remember her name. And so you say “(fill in the blank), would you like to go to dinner with me?” And she’ll either say yes or no and you go on from there.

Sometimes it happens where the night that you suggest does not work with our schedule- sometimes we have to go to wedding receptions for the kids we babysat. But we’ll make it clear that we want to reschedule.

Meanwhile, it’s usually pretty obvious when a girl isn’t interested, we generally don’t talk in code although we do have our secret signal for when we have to go to the bathroom in groups.
So we’ll either say No or something like “I have to wash my hair” or “I have to organize the files on my computer” or “I have to feed my cats.” If we say things like that, then you should just move on.

Boys, I hope that was helpful. If you have any suggestions for us girls, then I’ll be around all weekend. I need all the help I can get.

Thank you everyone! Good night!