we didn’t even know what the room looked like till the next morning

My family and I are not the most religous quartet in the world, but we pride ourselves on not being the least religous either. We go to temple on Sundays when we wake up feeling particularly bad about ourselves, which I assure you, is more common than you might expect overall, but less common on Sundays, than any other day of the week. Not having a favorite temple to attend, we often find ourselves making a decision of which to go to once we’re in the car. We have a room in our house, we call temple, but it’s just a room. I guess all temples are just rooms, though.

Houston has a lot of nice temples, a few that might catch your eye, and a few you’d wish to erase from your mind by taking a chance on hypnosis, even though you’re highly suspicous of those kids called hypnotists. Every city’s temples seem to have a certain mood to them - Houston’s temple mood is a bit busy. Some people are sitting down, some are walking, some are standing, but generally they’re all moving, either swaying, singing, playing an instrument, or even clapping. Temples where my sister lives, tend to have a slower feel, with not as much movement. People usually come, sit down, and only get up once, to leave.

When I was around eight or nine years old, we visited a temple in Austin once - it was one of the larger ones I’ve seen. It probably spanned a few acres, and i remember getting tired of walking, before we had even got out of the car. To make things easier for the employees, they had little golf carts that they drove around to get from one end to the other. A few hours after getting there, my parents had been off praying, and I had wandered out of the hall to find myself something to do. I spotted an empty golf cart, with the keys still in it, and it was running. I jumped in, and not knowing that carts don’t just reverse because you want them to, I drove the car, lunging it forward into a middle-aged lady, knocking her down. She was not happy.

I ran as fast as I could, and I never saw her again. I regret that day, and have always been at least a little scared of driving ever since. I don’t think she was hurt bad, she just fell. But i guess i’ll never know.