Irony

NEWSFLASH: For anyone who doesn't know me very well or just hasn't just put 2 and 2 together yet, I'm not an RM (Gasp!). I did not serve a full-time, proselyting mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When I was 18.75 years old, I submitted "papers," though most of them are electronic, to serve a mission. On the 22nd of April 2007, my branch president at the time called me into his office and told me that I would not be serving a mission for the church, and thus my zeal for missionary work died. However this is not the point of this blag post, it just gives a more full context...

The real point of this post is to help shed some light on the irony of my relationships with women since that fateful day in April. As most Mormons will tell you, according to Mormon culture, it is essentially a prerequisite for a man to be an RM before any young woman will be willing to marry him. While this is not a part of Mormon doctrine, nor is it universally true in Mormon culture, I seem to gain a stronger testimony of this principle daily.

The real irony of my not having served a mission is that I seemed to be much more popular with women during the two years that I should have been on a mission than I ever was before or have been in the year or so since my theoretical mission would have ended. In order to quantify these claims, here are some statistics that I've compiled for the 24 months I theoretically should have been on a mission and for the times both before and after:

From July 2007 to July 2009 (Theoretical mission timeframe):

• Fiancées: 2
• Months in a relationship: 17
• Percentage of time spent in a relationship: 71%
• Kisses: Countless
• GPA: 3.41

Before July 2007 AND after July 2009:

• Dates: 8-10, depending on your definition of a date
• Time in a relationship: 0
• Kisses: 0
• GPA: 3.62

Wow, this is even more depressing now that it's in print. Anywho, I must acknowledge a few things before I move on. I must acknowledge that the women with whom I was in relationships for these two years were, more or less, complete psychopaths, who should have caused me to preparing by looking for the nearest emergency exit, being aware that it might be behind me. Additionally, I've included my college GPA during the time periods in question as a reference to how distracted I was by other things. While this isn't actually that good of a measure in this case, there is actually a significant difference between the two.

Overall, it just seems like I took a two-year hiatus from being an awkward, antisocial nerd and have now picked up where I left off. The only real differences between the pre-mission me and the non-mission me is that now I have less hope for the future and no car.

These things being said, there's only really one way to end this post: