His Mercy Endureth Forever* 

I promise this will be the last on this theme...just closing the loop.

My sophomore year of high school I was so busy with football and marching band and trying to survive Mr. Berch's advanced algebra class that I don't remember much else...but junior year was another matter.

By that time I had decided I was not going to be a professional football player after all and that I better focus on academics.  That gave me more time for unrequited yearnings, and one came in the form of a young lady I sat by in history. It was a very dry class, and it gave me many opportunities to show off my wit by pretending I was various characters from U.S. History (the subject of the class)...  reincarnated (it isn't very hard...you should try it sometime). I felt like I got some traction, but I never got to the point I could pull the trigger, and ask her out on a date...(sigh).   

Junior year was also the year that I fell in with a group of students from my early morning seminary class, including my best friend,  Matt Chatterley, and three girls, Ruth Welsh, Dale Infanger, and Vickie Scholes (fun fact: Vickie was the sister in law to future BYU President and general authority.  seventy Merrill Bateman...and aunt of St. Louis Mission President Michael Bateman) That somewhat mollified my social needs for much of the rest of that year.

Unfortunately, during the summer between junior and senior years, Matt left with his family to go to Texas, and Dale with hers to Colombia, both of their fathers on sabbatical from BYU,  That sort of splintered our social group a little...Ruth and Vickie and I did a few things, but the dynamics were not the same...so I was free to dream again, and during my senior year there were several attractive subjects.  I learned how important dimples were to me via two of these, one of whom I served with  on the seminary council.  I also learned that difference in age was not all that important, as I admired two of our junior and one of our sophomore debaters.  This would be important later.

Still, I passed through my senior year having had a few more dates, but still mostly unrequited.  

The summer passed, and fall approached, and Matt came to live at my house as we both entered our first years at BYU.  My neighbor, Sister Linton, knew the director of the Stake Play that fall (Suddenly You're Older), and recruited us to try out.  We both got speaking and singing parts, and, another fun fact, I learned how to tie bow-ties (part of our costumes).  I was also cast opposite a raving beauty, long dark tresses, with whom I was in close proximity in each rehearsal for several weeks.  After the program, around the first of the year, I decided to ask her to go to a concert with me (John Denver).  I couldn't believe her lame excuse: she was having her tonsils out!  Well, that was that...if the subject of my affections didn't consider me more important than her tonsils, I saw no future in a relationship.

That was my last real yearning before my mission  and two years of celibacy.  When I returned I was

blessed to find a young lady that combined all the amazing qualities I had yearned for across the years in one lovely package.  And wonder of wonder...she liked me back.  All the past unfulfilled pinings and lame attempts were erased and forgiven.  My dreams became reality.

*1 Chr. 16:34