God help me.

My first boyfriend was a Mormon.

God, where should I even begin with this one? I should have ran away when I first met him, but unfortunately I stuck around for two years and I'm sure if I were to show up at Nottie's or someplace tonight I would be asked "Are you still dating the Mormon?"

Umm, no. We broke up seven years ago, but that's what happens when you date someone for so long in high school.

He's married now (no big surprise there), so I can talk about him now because it's not like his (mormon) wife is going to divorce him or anything.

For religious reasons I could not see or talk to him on Sundays. Keeping the sabbath holy or something. I also could not see him on holidays, including Christmas, Easter, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, Independence Day, Bastille Day, Boxing Day...pretty much if the banks were closed I couldn't see him. He would go to church all day on these days, or at least that's what he told me.

For a while there was also a rule that for every date we went on, he had to take a Mormon girl on a date. I guess so that he could find a wife before he graduated from high school.

(This shit would not stand now, but I was naive.)

We couldn't watch R-rated movies. He was over at my house one time and my parents were watching Dracula (the Bram Stoker version) and he asked me to ask my parents to turn it off because he couldn't watch it.

He was also cheap as hell. I think we went out maybe like four times in the two years that we dated. The rest of the time we'd watch movies at my house. Then we would make out. Then he would tell me I was going to hell because God didn't want him making out with non-mormon heathens. In fact, I was really the devil because I was trying to make him "unpure" so that he couldn't enter the temple.

In April of his senior year I found out he still hadn't applied to any colleges. I filled out the damn HCC application for him and mailed it in. I guess he spent too much time praying to actually apply to college.

He had this t-shirt from the Physics Olympics that he wore like everyday. With a flannel shirt, five years after the grunge look was in style. When I first met him he didn't bathe on a regular basis. He actually wrote in my yearbook "You have taught me the importance of hygiene when no one else could." Nice. Isn't cleanliness next to godliness?

He wrote (and sometimes spoke) in his rendition of old english. There was a lot of "ye" and "doth" in his vernacular. Yeah, that was a good time. (That thing in the yearbook probably actually says "Ye hath taught me...")

He wouldn't cuss. At first this was funny, but after awhile "Gosh darn it!" got pretty damn annoying.

He wouldn't drink caffeine and he told me my little sister needed to go into drug treatment because of her caffeine addiction (because she would drink ONE CAN of Dr. Pepper after school everyday).

The gas gauge in his car was broken. Instead of having it fixed (or at least watching the trip odometer), he would just drive his car until it ran out of gas and then have me call my mother to come pick us up.

Once, he promised to take me to the circus but then his family came into town and they were going to go to the beach instead. Rather than calling me and explaining and dealing with a little bit of whining from me, he had his mother call and tell me that until we were married, his family came first.

Junior year, he got "called" on his mission. He would be gone for two years and we wouldn't be allowed to talk to each other. He chose to break this news to me at halftime during a Friday-night basketball game. I was a cheerleader. It was one of the few times he actually game to one of my games. I think I ran out of the gym crying. It was real fun trying to be peppy after that. And then his cheap ass didn't even take me to dinner after the game.

He left on his mission the day before we left for Disney World for Nationals. Needless to say, I didn't have a good time in Florida that year.

A few weeks later he went apeshit and got kicked off his mission. He came back to Slumbia but didn't bother telling me. I guess he thought he could keep it a secret. One of the girls who danced with me went to his church. She was the one who told me he was back. I started hyperventilating in the middle of the dance studio. I got to go home early. You can guess where I stopped on my way home. That's when I broke it off for good, two years too late.