The Tie Game
Today began the 179th Semiannual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It also kicked off discussions all across the world of parents telling teenagers that the Saturday sessions are just as important as the Sunday sessions. When I was younger I didn't even know there were Saturday Conference sessions. All I knew was that twice a year my parents left on Saturday morning and didn't come back until the evening. They were using the Saturday sessions of conference to run away from us, and those were usually the days when the house was burned down or one of my siblings was locked in the closet for hours.
There was this rumor I used to hear about when I was younger, about this far off distant land, where people got to stay home and watch General Conference in their pajamas. When I finally had the chance to get voted onto the island, boy was it not what I thought it would be. First of all, when you watch Conference at church it's dark (they turn out the lights so you can see the screen, like in a movie theater), your parents can't tell if you have your eyes open or not, or if you are having a thumb war in the pew with your sister, but from home, oh no, they can see it all. My siblings and I had to come up with things like the "tie game." The tie game is when you wait for the knot of the tie of the person at the pulpit to be completely covered by the microphone.There are no winners or losers in this game. You don't even get points. You just sit, watching and waiting. With some speakers it gets so close and you are sure that it will cover the knot, but it never does, so you continue to watch and wait and then finally... there it is, no more knot.
President Thomas S. Monson
President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
and perfect example of the "tie game"
To this day my parents are still fooled by the tie game. My parents would glance over at their reverent children starring intently at the speaker on screen, and a smile would cross their faces....little did they know. Now I know what some of you are thinking, poor broke kids, playing the tie game, so sad. It is sad! Why didn't somebody tell my Mama about General Conference bingo (I just barely found out about this!).
Now this game looks like fun! When you hear a speaker say one of the words on your card, you get to put an M&M on it and the first one to get five in a row whispers bingo. See that would have helped us pay attention, even though our bingo cards would have been pencil drawn on recycled notebook paper (and by recycled I mean the backside of an already used sheet of paper), and we would have been using rocks from the yard as bingo chips (cause my Mother doesn't let us play with food). It's ok though, because now I am all grown up and I don't need gimicks to keep me interested in Conference. I am focused, I am like the Rocky of General Conference, watching, my eye is on the tiger (I don't know if that's even right... I was heavily medicated when I saw that movie). Go ahead quiz me on anything! (side note: its an open book quiz, so you can't quiz me until the November issue of the Ensign is out).Sista Laurel
