Boogie Visits Manti Utah II

When I wrote the original piece on Manti, I was pushing hard. I was already burnt out from the environment and the workload I was enduring while I was there. And since I wanted to make sure there was something here on TBMS to read on your blessed Friday, I forced the post.

Well, after careful review, I decided that a good chunk of the piece was a pile of garbage. Wandering dialogue, unnecessary jokes, and an excess of profanity. Granted I like profanity.... a lot. But dropping F-bombs in literature like this is something that must be done with a certain sense of class. We are intellectuals after all, are we not?

So, I did what any professional would do when glancing upon their own personally composed pile of filth: I fixed it.

So, the original post has been cleaned up and modified for a more uniform reading experience (since, that's really what it's about right?) And I thought I'd use the space today to list some of the other experiences I had in Manti that didn't fit in the overall work.

Enjoy.

• A pimply faced young man walked past me in that slouched and indifferent posture that screams to the world "I'm a virgin." He had on the standard issue CTR ring, as well as a black hoodie that had the word "LUST" on it in big white letters. Seemed ironic.
  

• These kids here seem to have no way of venting the high amounts of teenage rebellion that exists in the young spirit. The typical escapes such as smoke, alcohol, angry music, and pitiful sex all appear to be forbidden. The streets are uncomfortably clean. Never does one hear the sounds of thumpy rap or aggressive rock eminating from the passing cars. In fact, you barely hear the cars at all. Like the car engines are legally required to be somber and polite, they almost seem to ride on a cushion of air. It's hard enough growing up in a small town with no stimuli, believe me. So I can only imagine the strain it puts on the adolescent mind when one must not only be young and bored, but also considerate and godly. However, there does seem to be one untapped form of rebellion that hasn't been squashed by the powers that be: Hair. And these youngsters take advantage of that form by utilizing the most ridiculous hairstyles you can imagine. It was almost as if early 80's MTV just barely started transmitting in Manti. The number of perms, poofs, and intentionally bad dye jobs was astronomical. Still, I can't fault them for it. If I had to operate under the kinds of regime these kids did, I'd have my hair three feet tall, flourescently colored in all varieties of the rainbow, and moosed up so thick, you could land a plane on it.
  

• The rural world is typically a place where Apple computers still exist in high quantities in public schools. And it's not that anyone here subscribes to the whole persona of being a "Mac user," in fact I would dare say that no one in this part of the world even knows that such a persona exists. The abundance of such things is mostly due to the fact that Macs were once the most cheap and effective way to stock a school with computers. And while the rest of the world has come to acknowledge Apple has a premium (or at the very least, overpriced) brand, and stocked up on ultra economical Dells and the like, the country still houses the brightly colored Apple relics from another time. It's an interesting experience to wander through a school and see teachers toting Macbook Pros, and entire computer labs packed with shiny new iMacs. For some strange reason, you just feel like the kids are going to be better off. I'm sure a lot of it is my newfound bias, but I can't help but be swayed. Knowing that these youngsters are going to be utilizing a roomful of computers that cost anywhere from $1600 - $1800 dollars, you just figure the rewards of the experience are gonna pay off. Admit it, those low resoution screens with a wallpaper-less, pixelated version of XP filling our urban classrooms don't fill you with hope do they?
  

• I passed by the smallest museum I've ever seen in my life today. It was an old stucco structure that was just a little bit bigger than a Tuff Shed. The inside couldn't have been much bigger than the average living room, I kid you not. I really wanted to go inside and see just what kind of exhibits they could possibly have. But I figured that would be reinforcing a bad habit and kept moving on.

• I was sitting in a restaurant when I overheard a group of people talking. One of them used the sentence "you gotta work the shaft when you're hunched over like that." Nobody, not one person, cracked a smile. What the hell is wrong with this town?