Hello, my name is Shae, and I am not Mormon.

As many of you know, I live in Utah- a predominately Mormon (LDS) state. Wait- let's get real. Everyone's Mormon out here. And, as you can infer from the title, I am not Mormon. I have run into a plethora of problems surrounding this, ranging from being completely excluded during church sanctioned Speed Dating to simply not understanding the Mormon Lingo that is thrown around in daily conversation. The thing is, everyone out here assumes that everyone else is Mormon, and this assumption is safe, most of the time. Well, until I throw a wrench into the machinery, like I usually do. I am the official wrench thrower of 76.8% LDS Utah County, Utah.

Today, I sat at work, nonchalantly eating with my coworkers. Typically, if there is a common word thrown into conversation that makes no sense to me in context, I assume it is a Mormon word and I sit quietly until I understand what is going on again. For example, the sentence, "My ward played in the stake volleyball tournament last night," means, "A group of people from my church played volleyball against a group of people from other churches in the area last night." When I first moved to Utah, I assumed it meant something along the lines of, "My group home played volleyball with delicious chunks of meat last night." Clearly, there is a very different meaning. In any event, this evening, conversation turned toward "institute." I had no idea what that was, so I sat patiently until I felt that I understood enough of what they were saying to actively contribute to conversation. Unfortunately, my plan was foiled when a coworker asked me, "So, Shae, have you ever been to institute?"

It is important to note what my first thought of the definition of "institute" could be. My mind jumped to the word "institutionalized," so I inferred that "instutite" must mean a state mental hospital. I was shocked that she had asked me if I'd ever been. Luckily, I was taught excellent critical thinking skills and I realized that since this word made no sense to me in context, it must be a Mormon word. I looked at her, confident in my ability to problem solve, and said, "Oh, I'm not Mormon." The entire room grew quiet, literally. One girl raised her right hand and said, "Well, that's alright," and the conversation was promptly killed. We all sat in awkward silence until someone graciously changed the subject to something more neutral. The situation, though awkward and unfortunate to my coworkers, was wildly hilarious to me, and I giggled to myself while retelling the story to my roommate, who is also LDS.

I will be working on a blog delineating Mormon Lingo- what I thought it meant, and what it actually means. Look for this in the future.

Until then, this non-Mormon is going to bed.