Sunday Morning Rush

“C’mon guys, we’re gonna be late!” yelled Ryan. He was pacing around in the living room, necktie swinging from side to side.

Because Ryan, Mickael and Ian didn’t have a car, they had agreed with Chris that they would carpool to church on Sundays. There was just one little problem. Chris was taking FOREVER to get ready!

“Chris, c’mon man, hurry it up! You’re taking longer than my sisters!” yelled Ian, banging on the door of the bathroom that Chris was using. A mumbled stream of words was the only response. Ian sighed in apparent disgust and walked back into the living room where Ryan was nervously checking his watch. A moment later, Chris finally left the bathroom, tugging his cuffs into place.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” he cried as he ran past them, threw the front door open and dashed out. The others just rolled their eyes and followed him to where he had his car parked. Fortunately, Chris owned a late model sedan, so there wouldn’t be any problems fitting everyone inside. They piled in, Chris started the car… or at least tried to. The starter strained to turn over, realized it was a futile gesture and gave up the ghost.

“Dude, is your car busted?” asked Mickael.

“No! It was working just fine yesterday!” growled Chris as he tried to start the car.

Ryan looked at his watch again, noting that they only had 10 minutes left until Sacrament meeting started.

Chris gave up trying to start the car, snarled something incoherent and popped the hood. After poking around in the engine for a few moments, he shouted for Ryan to try the starter. Ryan leaned over and twisted the keys and the car’s engine roared to life.

“You gotta be kidding me!” groaned Chris as he hopped back into the car, “There wasn’t anything wrong!”

“What’s the big deal? If we’re late, we’re late, at least we’ll get there,” said Ian a bit sourly. It seemed the rush was starting to sour everyone’s moods.

“Yeah well I like to be on time,” retorted Chris. Speaking of time, Ryan glanced at his watch again. Eight minutes to go.

Just as they tried to pull out of the Branbury’s parking lot, a car zoomed past them, nearly hitting the front bumper. Chris leaned on the horn and shouted out the window, “This is a neighborhood! Drive like it!”

Fortunately that was the only road incident that happened as they drove up to the BYU campus. It was only as they approached the parking lots, that another problem cropped up.

“Okay, so where does our Ward meet again?” asked Ryan.

“The Benson building, room 110,” replied Chris as he pulled up to the main intersection next to the Hinckley Building.

“Okay… the Benson building… Benson building… where IS the Benson building?” asked Ryan.

“Eh? You mean you don’t know?” said Mickael, flabbergasted.

“No! I go to UVU! I’ve only been to BYU once!”

“Well don’t ask me! I go to UVU as well,” growled Chris as he pulled into one of the main parking lots and then groaned, “Look at all these cars! It’s as busy as the weekdays! Besides, Ian goes here, ask him where the benson building is!”

“But I don’t have any classes around here! I don’t know where it is either!”

“You mean that NONE of us know where the building is?!” said Ryan incredulously.

“Let me think for a moment,” said Ian irritably.

“Well, until I find a parking spot, have all the moments you want,” replied Chris sarcastically.

Finally, he found an empty spot and pulled in right before another car could pull in. They climbed out of the car with Ian peeling off towards the Campus commons.

“C’mon, I think it’s this way!”

Ryan checked his watch again. Three minutes. Three minutes that ticked away as they scrambled around campus, trying to find the Benson building. Of course they were in such a rush that they didn’t think to just ask the people they passed by as to where the Benson building was. But finally they found it… right as Ryan’s watch hit 12:00.

“Relax guys,” grinned Chris, who seemed to be recovering his good humor, “Everyone runs on Mormon Standard Time around here, we’ll be fine.”

But as they walked into lecture hall 110, they noticed that it was rather on the empty side.

“Uh… where is everyone?” asked Ian as they glanced around the empty room.

“It was supposed to be at 12:00 right?” asked Mickael.

“Hey guys!” came a cheerful voice from behind them. They all turned around to find Rachel.

“What are you all doing here early? Do you need to see the Stake President?” she asked.

“Uh, no, we’re here for Sacrament,” replied Ryan hesitantly.

“Sacrament? That’s not for another hour. Why did you think it was at noon?” asked Rachel.

“Our home teachers told us,” groaned Ian.

“Well I don’t know why they would, we’ve always met at 1:00,” replied Rachel. Three boys groaned in chorus, Chris just laughed. “Well then, I guess we’re not late after all, “ Chris commented with a smile and a friendly wink aimed at the pretty Branbury co-ed.

Free Food

Ryan leaned back in the couch as his thumbs flitted across the buttons of his Xbox controller. Man, what a week! Even after getting all of his stuff moved out of the truck and into the apartment, there had been the unpacking, the sorting, dividing between stuff he wanted in his room and stuff that would go elsewhere, etc. It had been a tiring and exhausting process, but at least he’d had his Brambury roommates to help him out. There had been Chris of course and he’d gotten a chance to meet his other two roommates. Mickael Konelio was a dark haired young man of Polynesian descent who was kind of one the quiet side and kept to himself in his room most of the time. Ian Kennson was a freckled, gangly redhead from the colorfully named town of Kalamazoo, Michigan, who was very… what was the best word? Church-y, Ryan supposed. Ian had a lot of those MormonAd posters in his room and seemed to listen to MoTab most of the time. He was just two months off of his LDS mission to Brazil and there were times when he would start speaking Portugese while talking out of habit.

Still, each of their eccentricities aside, he was grateful for their help. And speak of the devil, er, roommates, Ian came bounding in through the front door, a wide grin plastered all over his face.

“Hey Ryan! You like free food right?”

“What college student doesn’t?” replied Ryan with a grin.

“Well they’re doing a sort of a waffle brunch down at the clubhouse right now. In the mood to eat?”

“Sure, why not. Are Chris and Mike here?” Ryan still hadn’t quite worked out his roomie’s schedules.

“I think they’re both at work , so it’s just us.”

“All right, let’s go then,” said Ryan as he paused the game right as his virtual Mustang GT crashed through some roadside barriers. Meh, he’d been losing that race anyway.

A couple of buildings away, Lindsey was feeling a little less charitable towards her roommate and was beginning to wish that this was one of the four bedroom apartments here at Branbury. Rachel was a nice enough girl, she didn’t seem to mind taking care of all the cleaning, for which Lindsey was truly grateful. It wasn’t that she was a messy person per se, but she tended to leave it all to the last minute. With Rachel around though, the apartment had been sparkling from day one. Even their R.A., Lindsay, had mentioned that their’s was the cleanest apartment in the whole building! Just then, Rachel swept in, practically quivering in excitement.

“Hey Lindsey guess what?”

Lindsey had to resist the urge to roll her eyes; it was far too early in the morning for this level of enthusiasm.

“No, what?”

“They’re having a free brunch down at the clubhouse! Do you wanna go?” It was phrased as a question, but the blatant hope shining in the Asian girl’s sweet brown eyes made it kind of hard to say anything but “Sure, I wouldn’t mind. I’m not in the mood to cook anyway.”

“Great! Let’s go!” she cried happily, throwing open the door and bounding out before Lindsey had even got up from her chair.

At the clubhouse there was a fairly large crowd there already but this deal was being catered by the amazing Waffle Love dudes so there was still plenty of waffles for everyone. Ryan had never been too much of a waffle man, but the smell was starting to make him wish that the line would hurry up and move! Eventually they did get to the front where two of the RAs, Annie and Jake were helping the managers Nina and Erica serve the waffles. Ryan and his roommates loaded up their plates and then began to hunt around for a place to sit and chow down. Just as he was beginning to think all the good spots had been taken, Ryan noticed that there were some tables set up in the Institute room and motioned for his roomies to follow him in there. Turned out to be a good choice as there was just a pair of girls sitting in there.

“Is anyone else sitting here?” Ryan asked politely. One of the girls, an Asian with long, dark hair smiled at them widely and shook her head.

“Be our guests!” she replied perkily.

Ryan and Ian took their seats across from the girls and the dark haired one started talking almost immediately.

“Hi, I’m Rachel! I don’t recognize any of you guys; you all must be new. Where are you from?”

Eventually it was sorted out who was who and where they were from. Unfortunately while Ian seemed to be hitting it off with Rachel, Ryan ended up making a fool of himself when Lindsey revealed she was from Australia.

“Australia huh? Let’s-put-another-shrimp-on-the-barbie Australia?” he asked with a very exaggerated accent. Lindsey didn’t laugh, instead her gaze turned frosty and her lips tightened into a thin line.

“Yes, that’s the one,” she replied bruskly.

Sensing he’d made a gaffe, Ryan tried to explain himself. But you know what they say when you have to explain a joke…

“Actually I was doing that scene from the beginning of Dumb and Dumber, where Jim Carrey gets Austria and Australia mixed up?”

“Right. Sure. I get it,” said Lindsey with a complete and total lack of humor. Ryan decided that at that moment it was best to just shut up.

As they left the clubhouse, Chris put his arm around him and said, “Tough break, man. But hey, if us guys had a dollar for every time we screwed up in front of a girl, we’d be richer than Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne put together!”

“Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne don’t exist,” Ryan deadpanned.

“Okay, okay fine, richer than Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Take all the fun out of it why don’t ya?” What he didn’t know was that the fun was just about to begin…