A Study of Modedness

An awesome photo in my yearbook. Really? This was the only picture you had from that pep rally? So moded.

A recent mishap has made me ponder how some are more prone to being moded than others. In high school, the awesome Stephens family were introduced into my life, along with them they brought along the term "moded". There was no explanation needed, for I felt I had known this word my whole life but couldn't put a name on it. Since my introduction, I now have the perfect word that can sum up many of my life's events.

Athletics, surprisingly, is not a strong suite of mine. When I have to participate in these sorts of group activities, there is a lot of mumbling to myself and excuses to others. The recent mishap that occurred, took place at a church youth activity where I am one of the youth leaders. The activity was indoor, glow in the dark, dodgeball. So many awesome combos happening in one place, I knew I was going to shine. Everything was going great, picking up balls, throwing them and missing people all over the place.

Then I finally got a hit.

Followed by a cry.

I realized that I had nailed one of the girls I teach full on in the face. Which prompted the president of the youth group to say "Keep the hits below the neck."

A truly moded moment that even an "I am so sorry" couldn't erase. The one time I hit someone and it's one of my girls and it's in the face. The next few days I beat myself up pretty hard about it and as I did so, I pondered my moded roots.

Along with my stellar athletic skills, I am pretty good at being awkward in general, so going back for references was not hard at all. I could go all the way back to first grade if I wanted to but I can just link up an older blog post for that. I will just reference a teenage story and a young adult story. If a movie was made of my life these two would be included.

There is a youth camp that LDS church members can go to called EFY. My sister and I went and we were super excited to go. I was at a stage in my life where I really wanted to be a Roxy surfer chick. Did I surf? No. Did I ever try? No. Did I secretly think I was? Yes. I really thought that guys dug that surfing, water polo playing, dream girl. Did I mention that I am not really good at swimming? To this day I still plug my nose.

We were at one of the opening dances of the week and I got asked to dance by this really cute guy. We started asking about each other and I mentioned that I played water polo. As luck would have it, my sister danced by with a guy and heard my lie and instantly said "No she doesn't play water polo." I spent the rest of the song back tracking and spent the rest of my week with him in our group. It was pretty awesome.

I learned that I would never tell another lie about myself again and I would never go to a dance with my beautiful sister that didn't need to make herself sound cooler than she was to get boys to like her. Well actually we did tag team a lot of dances later, but I totally embraced the fact that I was not one of those smooth girls.

Ok, quickly, the next one which strangely involves a church dance as well. I guess dancing is another place I really shine. I got invited by my friend to go to a church New Year's Eve Single Adult dance in Huntington Beach. She was going with her crew of cute BYU dorm suite mates. Everything was fine, wasn't picking up any digits and definitely was not lining up my New Year's Eve kiss. It was one of those scenarios where you kind of know people but only really know the friend that invited you. So a lot of pretend busy-ness was happening.

It was getting close to midnight and from the stage they started tossing out party favors for ringing in the New Year. As luck would have it, they had those metal or plastic spinnie things that make that clicky noise. And as even more luck would have it, I got hit in the head with one, and there was no one around to laugh it off with.

Straight up modedness that I will always remember.

If you were unfamiliar with the term moded, hopefully these life stories helped give you a sense of what moded means. I could really make this a monthly post topic, because I've got lots. From the coughing fit at my fifth grade show choir concert, to being the stat girl for the girl's basketball team in middle school, to falling backwards down the bleachers at a very crowded high school football game. The list is truly endless.

I am just one of the lucky ones.

I am also the type that internalizes things and plays the incident over and over it my head and thinks "I am such an idiot." But luckily, I married into a family that really appreciates modedness and they are always the first to say how moded I was. I would have at least gotten a moded from one of them at that YSA dance. It's nice to know they've got my back.

And it's nice to know that one day I can look back and laugh. I had to learn that skill very early. Thanks for sticking with me through this long moded post.