good girls like me?

this is my friend nick. nick is from minnesota. nick and i met on lds linkup a couple of years ago. then we met in person in salt lake when we were both visiting, and have remained buddies. we have often talked about trying to meet up again, but it seems that our travels never have us in the same place at the same time, and i simply cannot be persuaded to make a trip to minnesota, unless i am flying through it (sorry nick!).

so today nick and i were chatting, and though i will spare you the bulk of the conversation, he made the following comment: "good girls like you don't mix with boys like me."

my immediate reaction was, good girl? good girl? who does he think he's talking about. and then i realized. it was me. and i am. and when did that happen??

i've always had a bit of a rebellious nature. i was a good mormon girl growing up, but there weren't that many of us, so being mormon was it's own rebelliousness. then i spent a lot of time around mormons while living in utah, i went completely inactive. did i still believe in the teachings of the church? yes. but i was rebellious.

i think rebelliousness was in me from the start. there is a favorite story in my family of a time when i must have been about 4 years old. dylan (just over a year younger) and i had been instructed not to do something (i can't remember what), and when i thought it was safe, i apparently looked at dylan and said 'let's disobey.'

or there was the time when my roughneck grandfather, who, even when being affectionate used an insane number of expletives and a volume above that of normal conversation, was reprimanding dylan for something (putting his muddy boots on the seat of the truck-i think), and i planted my own booted feet on the ground with my hands on my hips, stared up at this imposing 6'3" figure whom i didn't know all that well, and told him simply that he could not speak to my brother like that.

then there was the 'christmas story.' in my house the christmas story goes like this: once upon a time, there was a young girl, and she was rebellious. christmas time was nearing, and she was too smart to believe in that santa craap anymore. she logically deduced that if there was no santa, presents must come from parents, and if presents come from parents then they were probably findable.

and a great search was undertaken. with her little brother sidekick in tow, days were spent looking high and low. well, mostly low, because she wasn't that tall. and on one fateful day, as she crawled into the refrigerator sized box in the garage, her search was finally at an end. she was delighted to see that everything she had asked for was about to be hers.

however, as it turned out, her sidekick was a mole. he immediately ran to the parents and told them of what rebellious girl had done. needless to say, all presents were returned, and it was a sad sad christmas in the house of rebellious girl.

as you can see, i was simply born with this gene. so imagine my surprise at finding after conducting an honest self-evaluation, that my rebellious nature is perhaps a bit tamer then it once was. i still have my weaknesses. i'm still a bit mischievous. and i still dislike it when people tell me what to do. but i have less of a need to rebel for rebellions sake, and i actually strive to do the right thing in any given situation. so i guess, when i wasn't looking, i somehow turned into a good girl.

is this what they call 'progress'?