My parents grew up 20 minutes from each other… And yet their upbringings could not have been more different.
My mom grew up as a sort-of-cowgirl, daughter to a WWII vet, turned beet farmer and trucker. Her mother was an energetic artistic narcoleptic who had 7 children in a row before losing her arm to cancer after which she had 3 more children and then tragically died after the cancer returned. My mom grew up in the prairie, with sheep dogs, horses, a stepmother, summer rodeos, and playing in the dirt. She came from good and strong Danish pioneering stock. Her days were spent trying to get along with her 10 siblings, going through a rebellious phase in high school, eating jam and cheese sandwiches before church on Sunday, and playing in the ditch that was way too dangerous for us ever to play in.
My mom’s true passion in life was dance, but she ended up in the medical field as an exceptional X-ray technician which is what she was doing when she met my dad. My mom didn’t grow up doing a whole lot of reading… she wasn’t bookish, but her life was filled with lots of hard work, outdoorsy activities, trying to keep the swearing under control, being active, and trying to overcome family trauma.
20 minutes down the highway my dad was trying to beat his high score at the local arcade. My dad was born in Australia, and spent the first year of his life in Japan… because my grandpa was some kind of salesman?!? (Does anyone really know what their grandpa did for work?) His mother was the daughter of German immigrants and loved all things herbs, fresh goat’s milk, making healthy things taste good, and growing gardens. His father was a Korea vet who became a salesman? Something having to do with cars and perhaps other things? Instead of 10 siblings, my dad grew up with two idiot brothers who were borderline sadistic and insane so he mostly kept to himself and discovered the video game which requires only yourself to play. He spent his days beating his high score in Pacman, shooting hoops, going to private school, becoming a theatre kid, and writing short stories. His greatest accomplishment was taking a lesbian to prom while wearing a baby blue tux.
My dad’s true passion was philosophy, thinking, writing, and any other creative intellectual outlets however, he ended up learning all about a new-fangled invention called the computer and dedicated his life to learning the code, language, and skills of the technological world which was rapidly expanding.
So my mom was outdoorsy, active, lots of camping and rodeo, taking care of animals, dancing, and the medical field.
My dad was comfortable, mostly indoors, private school, reading and writing, video games, some sports, and of course computers.
Now they say that when two people get married one parent’s lifestyle always wins out.
If you’ve never heard that it’s ok… I just it made it up… but it seems like it’s true.
Well it’s hard to say if one upbringing really won out… but if we do a quick thought experiment things might become clear.
It’s a Friday night at the Johnson house. Everyone has been going all week long and we’re excited to do something fun as a family. Are the Johnsons more likely to…
- Stay inside, watch a movie, catch up on gaming, curl up and read a book, make the NYTimes famous cookie recipe, and eat homemade pizza
- Go outside, attend a rodeo, ride horses in the mountains, go for a 10-mile family jog, play soccer at the park, go rafting in the river while eating granola bars and carrots
If you chose (A) you get 1000 gold stars because it’s the right answer.
Now my siblings and I aren’t opposed to going outside… in fact you could say that “loving the outdoors” is a fundamental part of all of our personalities just like everyone else in the state of Utah.
But it’s more natural for all of us to do the comfortable thing, to read a book instead of hiking, to watch a movie about cowboys instead of going to see actual cowboys at the rodeo, and to bake brownies in a real oven instead of cooking hotdogs by the fire.
We like to dance… at least twice a year when we bust out JustDance 4 our favorite Wii game
We enjoy sports… also a few times a year when we remember our childhood love of soccer
We love going to the rodeo every summer… even though half of us leave with our eyes swollen shut due to animal allergies
You see… we WANT to be those people
We want to ride horses comfortably
And play family soccer on the weekends
And replace our weekly cookie intake with watermelon or carrots
We WANT to be that family that loves camping and hiking and being in the canyon and we’ve made some real strides in the past few years to be these kinds of people… namely, the 6-year food cleanse that fundamentally changed the way my family ate, the 4 cross country road trips we’ve been on and my parent’s new obsession with the sport of pickleball.
But now is a story of only one thing that has single-handedly kept the family from living inside like cavemen
Every single year from ages 12-18 my siblings and I found ourselves for that annual week in June at summer camp.
Summer camp is a distinctly American experience. It somehow combines all that is good and difficult about life into a few short days or weeks and then sends you home having lived a whole life up in the woods.
You see my summer camp was no Camp Rock or The Parent Trap
I didn’t dump honey on anyone, chop up a girl’s dress, eat Oreos with peanut butter, or find my long-lost sibling. I didn’t play keyboards on weird settings and dance in the woods to challenge the neighboring camp to a “rock off.”
My summer camp was Christian Church Summer Camp
This means everything we did had a distinctly churchy vibe to it
We searched for prayer rocks in the woods to match the painted scriptures we had done on wooden blocks
We gathered at the lake to sing hymns while we held lanterns
We sang songs about finding a righteous man, being an animal on Noah’s Ark, and not drinking caffeinated soda.
We spent 40 minutes in the woods reading scriptures and praying
We decorated our pillowcases with scripture verses
We went canoeing on the lake and had to catch values like “faith” and “divine nature” that were represented by chopped-up pool noodles.
We played games like “Guess that prophet” or the classic “open the scriptures to a random verse and whichever one you land on is your future”
We had discussions about what the Second Coming of Jesus is going to be like while we stared at the stars… until everyone got so freaked out that we had to wake up the leaders and sing a pray some more.
The only non-religious thing we did was the annual Snipe Hunt where we went on a 2-hour hunt in the dark for a fake mythical creature to scare ourselves a little bit (since the hellfire and brimstone of the second coming wasn’t scary enough for all of us)
Every year at girl’s camp had a MASSIVE spiritual theme that everything for the entire week was based on.
The best theme of all happened at my 4th annual summer camp.
The Theme: Happily Ever After
Every group got to choose their very own princess story and there were jackets, and lanyards and pins, and banners made in accordance with the story.
The real happily ever after? Obviously to return and live with God… but we had to incorporate Disney stories to make things a little more summer campy.
The very last night at summer camp is always a special one. You walk through the woods with your bestie girlfriends after a week of not showering and sleeping in cabins or tents and working out pathetic drama fests that always happen at summer camp.
You walk through the woods together holding lanterns and listening to stories of faith and testimony and singing songs and then… the best moment of all… you gather together around a campfire for a testimony meeting.
Now let me just say that there is nothing… NOTHING Christians love more than a blazing fire in the middle of the woods and sharing testimonies about God… It’s the Christian dream.
So there we all were… 30 girls ranging from 12-18, our female leaders who were anywhere from 25-60, and a few male church leaders as well sharing our beliefs about God, Religion, and of course our Happily Ever After.
For a large part of that testimony meeting, I was staring deeply deeply into the fire and having myself a Lucy Pevensie moment when Mr. Tumnus plays his creepy flute for her in Narnia. That’s a fancy way of saying I was a little checked out.
But I quickly and rapidly came to full consciousness when I heard these words from my Bishop who lived just down the street and had known me my entire life.
He said,
“This year is focused on Happily Ever After… because all of you are princesses, with a divine nature and destiny. That’s why the Johnsons named their daughter after Ariel from The Little Mermaid.”
Now take a little journey into my mind at that moment to see my succession of thoughts
-What in the worst character in all of Disney to name your kid after
-Weirdo Johnsons choosing Ariel out of all the princess names
-Wait I don’t even know an Ariel
-Wait…
-My family is the only Johnson family in the neighborhood
-Wait…
-Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat
-My name is Ari which is kind of similar to Ariel
-Wait stop
-There is no way
-This is not possible
-This is not happening
Despite this thought journey my face didn’t move a muscle during this whole experience.
After listening for a few more seconds to Bishop the answer became clear.
My bishop who had known me since birth, who lived just down the street, who had spoken to me multiple times, actually believed that I was named Ariel after The Little Mermaid and was going by the name Ari just for the heck of it.
Yes. He was talking about me.
This was hurtful for two reasons
- My name actually does come from somewhere and it’s infinitely more amazing and cool and inspiring than being named after Ariel from The Little Mermaid. I don’t even hate Ariel… No actually I do. She’s just a strange person and I’ve never felt a connection to her or her story. (I am a fan of the red hair though and wish my hair naturally tended towards that color) I was not named after a mermaid… but a bad a** freedom fighter for the State of Israel, so the bridge between these two extremes is not crossable.
- All those 30 other girls sitting around the fire felt deeply betrayed when they had to find out from the Bishop that their dear friend didn’t even tell them the origins of her name. I had to host a full-out press conference after that campfire to clear up the confusion and reestablish my friendships.
So despite not a single person in my entire life EVER thinking that I was named after The Little Mermaid, and despite Bishop not having a single shred of evidence that what he was saying was true, and despite Ariel being one of my least favorite Disney princesses of all time…
I understood why he did it.
AND I even supported it.
The summer camp theme is everything, and he needed in that moment a way to bring the epic theme to a grand conclusion.
He needed me to be named after a Disney Princess.
He needed Ariel.
Let it never be said that I was the cause of a theme not reaching its grand conclusion.
So after a few moments of shock… I just nodded into the fire in acceptance because I felt happy that my name was the martyr in the cause of church summer camp.
The nodding is probably the reason I had to host a press conference afterward. While it looked like agreement to the Bishop, it looked like cold-blooded betrayal to all of my girlfriends who thought that they knew the real me.
The nodding is also the reason that my sweet, plant-loving-professor-Bishop still doesn’t know to this day that the family that lives up the street did not name their daughter after a Disney character with blazing red hair.
So now I live a double life, my summer camp-named-after-a-disney-princess life, and my real named-after-an-Israeli-freedom-fighter life… and living a double life is something that Ariel, The Little Mermaid, understood as well… so maybe we are more similar than I thought.
That being said… my parents might have had vastly different upbringings causing confusion among their children, but one thing they could agree on is that their daughter was not going to be named after The Little Mermaid.
The End