Fatal Flaws Read online

  *****

  When I was sixteen years old, my principal, Mr. Brown, unexpectedly entered my third period classroom and apologized to my math teacher for the interruption. He then called my name and told me to grab my things and follow him to his office. I wondered what the hell was going on and tried to think of anything I’d done that could be resulting in my being hauled to the principal’s office. As we walked down the main hallway of my high school, I asked if I was in trouble for something. He told me that I need not worry about being the object of any disciplinary action, but that he didn’t want to give me any more information until we reached his office, where we could have some privacy.

  Arriving at the school office, just inside the main entrance of the building, Mr. Brown led me past the counter—the barrier separating the all-powerful administrators from the mere mortals of the student body. We walked through a small maze of hallways which provided access to the faculty break room, the offices of the school counselors, the vice principal, and finally, to the office of the biggest swinging dick on campus—the principal.

  As we approached, I could see through a window in the wall of the office that my mother and my sister Amanda were seated within the suite at a round table. The table had a polished red mahogany finish matching that of Mr. Brown’s highly organized desk, which sat at the opposite end of the room. I remember being impressed by the office, and immediately recognized it as a place where important people met to discuss important topics. Surrounded by six matching mahogany chairs, the table was clearly the venue at which high ranking school administrators came together to discuss business which warranted involvement of the big guy himself. My mother and sister seemed out of place seated at such a formidable piece of furniture and I wondered what kind important topic they were there to discuss with me and Mr. Brown that day.

  Mr. Brown opened the door for me, saying, “Please come in young man.”

  “Mrs. Bishop,” he said, “you are welcome to use my office for as long as you need it. I’ve got a number of items on my itinerary today and none of them involve sitting at my desk. Feel free to show yourselves out whenever you are finished here.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Brown,” she said with a sad smile. “We certainly appreciate it.”

  “My pleasure,” replied Principal Brown as he gently closed the door.

  “What the heck is going on?” I immediately asked.

  “Yeah, Mom!” Amanda joined in. “You’ve been acting weird since you pulled me out of class, and you haven’t told me a thing.”

  “Okay, guys,” she said. “I just thought we all needed to be together before I said anything. So, here goes. Um, well, your father was in an accident at work today.”

  “Whoa!” I said. “What happened? Is he alright?”

  “Actually, no. He’s not. He was working at a construction site and there was some type of accident. I don’t have all of the details, but what I do know is that they rushed him to the hospital and uh, well—they weren’t able to save him. He passed away.”

  *****

  My father’s funeral service was, surprisingly to me, very well attended. He’d worked with a lot of people over the years and, based on what was said about him during the service, was well-respected by his peers and considered to be a great guy. Scores of people approached my mother and told her how sorry they were for her loss. My mom cried throughout the funeral and I wondered how she could seem so heartbroken after all of the terrible things he’d said and done to her. I tried my best to seem appropriately sad so that I didn’t give the impression that I was some kind of coldhearted psycho. It wasn’t that easy, however. What I mainly felt that day was relief. I remember wondering, as the congregation sang Swing Low Sweet Chariot, if my prayers had been answered and my father’s untimely death was the result of a celestial intervention on my behalf.

  As I sat and listened to the various speakers who felt compelled to share their thoughts and feelings with the group of mourners, my mind wandered, and I considered my own future spouse and children. I wondered what they would think of me and my life as they sat at my funeral someday. How would people describe me? All I knew for sure was that my father was the most evil motherfucker that I’d ever known, and that I’d sooner put a bullet through my brain than ever intentionally hurt the woman I would someday marry or the children she would bear for me.

  Those people seated around me in the chapel that day were probably moved by the tears that streamed down my cheeks and the sobs that I tried to stifle. Certainly, they thought I was lamenting the loss of a man for whom I had great love and esteem. What they didn’t know was that I was reliving, in my mind, the many times his words and actions led me to despise him and nearly prompted me to violently confront him. During these times, I hated him for his meanness and the weakness he demonstrated as he failed to control his temper. It wasn’t the first time in my life that I had examined the lack of love and utter contempt he had inspired in me.

  What I realized for the first time, as I stared at the expensive and beautiful casket which contained the corpse of a man who deserved to be buried in nothing more than a simple pine box, was what truly inspired my loathing for the man. The true origin of my hatred was that his behavior had forced me to face my own weakness of character, a weakness that prevented me from defending myself, my sister, or my mother during his furious tirades. Even as I’d grown into a young man with enough physical strength to possibly deter him from launching his vicious assaults, I’d never even tried. I had repeatedly been given the opportunity to stand up to the ultimate bully, but I’d never shown him that I was at least willing to try to back him down. My tears of frustration continued to drip from my chin onto my khaki slacks as I recognized that, had I exhibited a greater strength of character, I may have been able to prevent some of the pain that resulted from my father’s rampages.

  I resolved at that moment that I would never allow myself to lose control of my temper and lash out violently at a loved one, as I had seen my father do so many times. Taking it one step further in my mind, I swore to myself as I listened to the fools who were grieving the loss of a man they clearly did not truly know, that I would never allow anyone to hurt my spouse or my offspring. God help the motherfucker, I told myself, who would ever make the fatal mistake of causing harm to my future wife or bringing violence into the life of one of my future children.

  After the funeral, I asked my mother if she was truly sad about losing her husband, or if she was merely showing the attendees the reaction they expected. She told me she was mourning the loss of an earlier version of my father. She reminded me that he hadn’t always been cruel, and that she still missed the man she had married and was brokenhearted that she’d never be with that man again. Apparently, she had never given up on the possibility that my father would recognize his own fatal flaws and that the sweet, supportive, loving boy she had fallen in love with as a teenage girl would one day reawaken within him.

  “Your father did do something wonderful,” she said. “He gave me two beautiful children, and for that I will always be grateful to him.”

  Section Two:

  Making a Friend

  Chapter 6

  It was October of 1995, and I was sitting in priesthood meeting in Fort Worth, Texas. At the time, the priesthood met during the third hour of worship services every week at the Mormon Church. One might wonder how many priests there are at a Mormon Church, and question if it would really be enough to justify an entire meeting. The answer is that most teenage and older males hold one office or another within the Mormon priesthood. It’s not like there is just one guy who has gone through ecclesiastical education and presides as the religious leader of the entire congregation, as is the case in many of the other Christian sects.

  I too, was once a willing participant in the weekly mind-numbing assemblies of the body of the local Mormon priesthood. Over time, however, I realized the folly of participating in a fantastical church organization which claims that a life devoted to living
its principles is the only way one can be admitted to the eternal country club known as Heaven. There are many reasons that my faith progressively eroded to the point that I could no longer subject myself to doctrines that represented nothing more than a theological hoax to me. Suffice it to say that I broke free from the Mormon Church long ago. Other than lamenting the time I wasted attending three hours of church meetings every Sunday for the better part of a decade, I have never looked back.

  This story begins, however, at a time in my life when I was completely brainwashed and indoctrinated regarding the validity of the Mormon religion. I was 26 years old. I had been introduced to the Church at age 18 when my girlfriend and wife-to-be explained that if I wanted to marry her, I was expected to convert to Mormonism and take her to a Mormon temple, where we could be ‘sealed’ (promised by God that our marriage would continue into the afterlife) together for time and all eternity. I had been raised in the religion of ‘nothingism,’ so it was not too difficult to give up my previous religious beliefs. Mandy was (and is) gorgeous, funny, and the coolest chick I could ever imagine being with. I didn’t see any reason to refuse to comply with her request, other than the fact that the idea of me becoming a Mormon freaked my mother out.

  Chapter 7

  Mormon Church services are different from most Christian religious sects. Because the church lacks a professional clergy, the lessons are usually taught by some dipshit who was not resourceful enough to come up with a plausible reason to reject their teaching assignment. It often seems that those chosen to speak figure, “hey, I can always drone on about my testimony of Jesus and the fact that I get a good feeling when I engage in some act of service, like taking a meal to the home of a family struck by illness, or shoveling the walk of the widow down the street after it snows”. Trust me, you hear some powerful stuff while you sit there amongst a choir of screaming babies and listen, once again, to how you should be out spreading The Word, so that church membership will continue to grow. In fact, the subject of at least 90% of the meetings I attended during the time I counted myself a practicing Latter Day Saint, was the sacred duty that all members have to convince those around them to drink the proverbial Kool-Aid and become a member of the church that represents the only true gospel of Jesus Christ.

  Basically, while sitting in Sacrament Meeting ( bad ), Sunday School ( worse ), or Priesthood Meeting ( bamboo under the fingernails ), you could either acknowledge that you were there to please someone else and drift off to a world of fantasy where there are only six days in the week and none of them are Sunday, or you could try to get something out of the experience. Every once-in-a-while, the weekly priesthood meeting might be led by someone who is less of a numbskull than the average speaker. When this was the case, the lesson would sometimes offer a morsel of entertainment or spiritual confection which could be consumed by the body of The Priesthood in order help us sustain the belief that we were not all participating in yet another spiritual circle jerk. Enter my future friend and running buddy, Hank Simmons.

  On that fateful day, I was seated among my priesthood brethren, trying to be a good apostle of Jesus and holder of my sacred priesthood office. Elder Johnson, ironically just 21 years old, was leading the meeting. He had recently returned from his mission in Brazil, where the Mormon Church was growing by leaps and bounds. Why do the Brazilians love Mormonism, you might ask? Who knows ...why did the Germans of the 1990’s love David Hasselhoff? Sometimes freaky shit just happens. Anyway, not-so-Elder Donald Johnson opened the meeting and discussed upcoming events. I can’t honestly say that I listened to his monologue, but I’m certain it included the typical announcements for things like the upcoming movie night in the multi-purpose room, a father/daughter hayride and dance, or a blood drive that one of the Boy Scouts was organizing to earn points toward his Eagle Scout certification. Spiritually powerful stuff!

  “To offer our lesson today,” said the youthful Elder Johnson, “is Brother Hank Simmons. He will be starting a three-part series of lessons on managing our family finances in the setting of meeting your financial obligations to the Church. I know he has done a lot of research and is eager to share with us the way to prepare for our financial futures, just as our devoted Church Presidency prepares for the spread of the gospel throughout the Earth.”

  Now, I personally had always found that a paradox existed within the Mormon Church regarding planning for the future. The full name of the church is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The ‘Latter Day Saints’ part alludes to the idea that the Earth and all of its inhabitants are in the latter days of existence. According to church doctrine, at some point in the not-too-distant future, Jesus was going to return to earth, at which time all of humanity will be thrown into Jesus’s blender and he is going to hit the puree button. Essentially everything is supposed to be destroyed in order to pave the way for Christ’s millennial reign on Earth ...blah, blah, blah. So then why, I’ve always wondered, is the Mormon Church always focusing on encouraging its members to stock up with “one year’s worth” of food and other supplies? It’s as if Mormons believe that they are going to somehow avoid having their homes and churches destroyed by the floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, fires, hurricanes, wars, and all the other Armageddon shitstorms that had been prophesied to be bearing down on us.

  Interestingly, the Church also always seemed to preach fiscal responsibility, which had led to several famous Mormon financial tycoons like Mitt Romney and the Marriott brothers, who scored big enough in the hotel industry to even put a little light reading material call the Book of Mormon in the bedside table in each of the bazillion rooms within their hotel empire. So, it always seemed to me like we were being told to prepare for a future reality that would never actually exist. However, just in case the timetable within the prophecies was just a bit off ( which has apparently been the case since the inception of the church in 1822 ), I figured that it probably wasn’t a bad idea to put back a few bucks in case I actually made it to retirement. A sizeable nest egg would be handy in the event that Mandy and I would someday decide to tour the many Mormon temples across our great nation as we rolled down the interstates in our Winnebago RV, being ever watchful for the first sign of brimstone dropping from the sky or a blinding pillar of light indicating that the savior is making his long awaited entrance.

  With all of this in mind, I figured I’d give this particular lesson a chance and not start zoning out just yet. I had heard that Brother Simmons was an anesthesiology resident at John Peter Smith Hospital, where I was a resident physician in the Obstetrics and Gynecology (OB/GYN) department. He was clearly an intelligent guy and maybe he was worth listening to—especially considering I was stuck at church for another hour anyway.

  The 1995 version of Hank Simmons was a good-looking guy, probably even almost as good looking as he thought he was. He reeked of self-confidence, and he was, actually, a fairly eloquent speaker. Prior to that Sunday, I’d seen him at church a few times, but had never been introduced. You have to keep in mind that this was my first year of OB/GYN residency, so I missed a lot of church services due to being on-call at the hospital or recovering from being on-call. Medical residencies can be ass kickers and often leave little time for any remaining interests or obligations like family, household chores, and even God. I had heard that Hank was a fourth year anesthesiology resident, so I figured he had, likewise, missed his fair share of church services.

  I had noticed Hank’s family before, as well. He and his attractive wife, Patti, had three kids who were roughly the same ages as my own. Of course, most Mormons start their families early, and it seems like most of them pop a kid out every couple of years until they feel they’ve done their duty to God by making more little Mormons for him, so if you started having kids about the same time as another member couple, you most likely had kids of corresponding ages. His kids were much like mine, with blonde hair and blue eyes. In fact, both families had such strong Aryan physical characteristics that I remember thinking to myself at
the time that someone observing us might wonder if we were all the result of some type of Nazi master race experiment.

  “So, my name is Brother Simmons, and I have done a lot of preparation for this set of lessons, even before it was assigned to me,” he said. “I come from a background where little thought was given to saving money or preparing for retirement, which is why my father lives in a small trailer outside of Ogden, Utah, living on a seven hundred dollar a month disability check. I decided a long time ago that I was going to be monetarily wealthy, as well as spiritually wealthy, so I started learning about investing and money management as soon as I got back from my mission.”

  Wow, this guy seemed impressive. Here was a youngish guy, probably six or seven years older than me, who was already figuring out grown-up things, like financial planning. I was technically a ‘grown up’ and had even fooled my medical training educators and mentors into thinking I was a responsible and mature young man. Though I had a medical degree, a wife, and three kids, I was very much a man child. It would be years before I truly felt like I had my ‘adult’ shit together. Probably due to my perception of this contrast between us, I started developing a respect for—and perhaps an envy of—Hank shortly after he started speaking that day.