Music

There comes a time in every young missionary's life when he wants meet each member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, shake their hands, and then chop them up with a machete.

Two years separated from one's favorite genres and artists is one thing. Two years with few options beside MoTab (as the hip missionaries say) can do a number on one's brain. Some mission presidents are a little more lenient and allow classical music or other spiritual things. Some mission presidents allow EFY music — the soundtracks to the Church's Especially For Youth camps that sound like Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers found God and lost their sense of tone at the same time. My mission president, to his credit, despised EFY music.

Elder Patten and I rode in our car one day toward the outskirts of our area, a subdivision that would continue booming throughout the next few years until the economic downturn left many houses unfinished or unsold. It was a twenty-minute drive, which could be passed by listening to whatever was in the CD player.

"Which MoTab CD do you want?" Elder Patten said, passing me his CD case as he started the car.

The last few weeks, those spent in confinement during Elder Patten's sickness, had been filled almost nonstop with the sounds of the Choir, which are great for Sabbath days and times when you want to fall asleep or feel like you've suddenly aged to past fifty. I just couldn't stand it anymore.

"No," I said, and removed from under the seat a case of Disney CDs Elder Vamkampen had left me.

"Whoa," he said, as though I had just removed a bag of cocaine.

"Yeah." I pressed Disney's Greatest Hits, Volume II into the CD player.

"There you see her ..." sang the speaker. "Sitting there across the way..."

It was a change, at least.