Welcome to Provo!

Stephen: I posted this on my personal blog, but thought I'd put it here as well.

Yesterday I had one of the weirdest experiences of my life, one that pretty much sums up the way things are in Provo.

I’ve been pretty sick lately, coughing a lot, sniffing and blowing my nose every couple of minutes. The last 3 or 4 days I’ve also been working a lot, and my muscles have been really sore from jumping rope (my new workout of choice). Anyway, after a long day at work yesterday, I just wanted to come home and crash.

When I got home, I decided to take a bath. I know that traditionally men don’t take baths, but I used to always take a bath in high school after a really hard practice or when I was absolutely exhausted, and that’s how I was feeling. So I turn up the music on my computer, and start soaking.

Pretty soon I hear a knock on the door. At least I THOUGHT I heard a knock on the door; I couldn’t really tell with the music so loud. I figured they were neighbors coming to complain about the volume and so I, wanting to avoid an awkward encounter with my non-English speaking neighbors, jumped out of the tub and turned off the music.

I got back in the water, put my head back to relax, and just when I was getting settled heard the knock again. At this point I wasn’t really sure who it could have been, all I knew was that if I simply ignored them, they’d have to go away, right? Isn’t that normally what you do when you knock on someone’s door and they don’t answer? Go away?

Well, not in Provo.

The next thing I know, someone is shouting from my living room, “HELLLLO?”

There was an awkward pause as I sat naked in the tub, calculating my next move.

“YEEEAH?” I responded.

“YOU MIND IF WE TAKE A LOOK AROUND?” they shouted back.

Again, an awkward pause. They were probably looking for a place to live in the fall, and simply wanted to size up my apartment and the available vacancies. This experience is normally awkward enough on it’s own—being naked and in the bath tub while it takes place makes it ten times worse.

“UH, WELL I’M KIND OF TAKING A BATH,” I eventually replied.

Silence.

“MAYBE YOU GUYS COULD COME BACK IN LIKE 10 MINUTES?”

“OH, WOULD THAT BE BETTER?”
I paused, wondering why they even needed to ask that question.

“YEAH, THAT’D BE BETTER.”

“SO HOW MUCH IS RENT IN THE FALL?” one of them shouted.

Again, remember that I’m shut in my bathroom, wrinkly, wet, and really really naked.

“260.”

“HOW MUCH DO UTILITIES USUALLY COME OUT TO?” They shouted in my general vicinity.

“I DON’T KNOW, I JUST MOVED HERE,” I shouted back, wondering if they’d missed the part about coming back in 10 minutes.

“DID SOMEONE GO TO THE CANARY ISLANDS?” On of them asked. At this point I was somewhat creeped out, because the only thing that could have tipped them off to that is the large map/poster I have of the Canary Islands IN MY BEDROOM (which happens to be RIGHT outside the bathroom where I sat naked in the tub.)

“UH, YEAH.”

“WHO?” they asked.

“ME.”

“I WENT THERE ON MY MISSION,” he said, “WHAT’S YOUR NAME?”

“STEPHEN ROBBINS,” I said, praying that the person outside wasn’t someone I knew, thus adding to the awkward scale even more. Luckily it wasn’t, and they responded with a lackluster, “OH.”

There was another long pause, and finally they said, “OK, SO WE’LL COME BACK. THAAAANKS.”

I quickly finished my bath, and went to make sure all my possessions were still in place, the bike, the TV, the IPOD. Nothing was stolen. They did in fact come back, 10 minutes later, mostly to ask about the Ward (local congregation in Mormon speak), ie. Are there lots of babes there, how many babes, how babe-y are the babes, and what percentage of the babes are spoken for (when searching for a religious congregation, these are really the types of questions you want/NEED to be asking yourself).

I think Provo is in interesting place in this way. I don’t know if there’s anywhere else in the world where such a . . . naïve global trust exists for everyone around you. Only here would you think it was ok to simply walk into someone's apartment, and to ask the naked bath tenant questions while you snooped around his stuff. And only in Provo would I be slightly worried, but at the same time trusting of the people snooping around my apartment while I was taking a bath. If I were living anywhere else I probably would have simply yelled, "GET OUT OR I'LL CALL THE COPS!"

It’s kind of a weird feeling, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, in some ways it’s really nice (don’t get me wrong, I still lock my door every night . . . and from now on while I’m in the shower/bath). I’d just rather people didn’t “take a look around” while I was washing my naked body. That’s all.

Stephen