OH HOLY HECK

Dear Spike:

I couldn't help but sigh when your social security card came in the mail, a few weeks after you were born. The nine digits on that baby will follow you around for the rest of your life, giving employers, insurers, creditors, educators and the government a way to keep tabs on you.  

The idea that Big Brother already had you on his grid was depressing enough. But it was those first three numbers were especially depressing. Most folks don't know it, but that prefix is code for the state in which you were born. 

And so, no matter where you go, what you do or what place you ultimately come to think of as your home, you will always be a...

... sigh ... 

... Utahn.

Your mother and I came to Salt Lake City thinking it was a good stepping stone to somewhere else. A rest stop on the road of life. We figured we'd spend a few years here en route to another place — probably a bigger town on the west coast. 

Portland would have been nice. Seattle too. San Francisco or San Diego, oh yeah.

We'd leave Los Angeles to your Aunt Kelly, but anywhere else would have been swell.

But we found a nice home here, right across the street from one of the coolest city parks in the country. We found some good friends, too. We grew to love the mountains and got used to the sweltering summers. The winters? I hardly even notice the cold anymore. And every time it snows, I glance up at the canyons, do a little fist pump, and check our bank account to see if there's enough in there for a lift ticket. 

When you came along, we did some thinking about the issue and recognized that this wouldn't be too bad a place to raise a kid.

The clincher came when your mother got hired at the elementary school a few blocks away. It wasn't just the proximity. She'd found a place where she was making a difference — a place where like-minded people were teaching their guts out and where it really mattered that they were.

And yeah, the five-minute bike ride was nice, too. Suddenly, neither of us had a commute. You can't put a price on that. 

I like this place. I like our life here. And if we end up staying here for the rest of our lives, I wouldn't be sad about it. 

But for whatever reason, I've resisted calling myself a Utahn. Maybe it's just that the word is so funny. Maybe it's that, for whatever reason, I've long held onto the very Californian idea that being from California makes you so much cooler than being from anywhere else. And maybe it's that, for whatever reason, I really came to feel like an Oregonian during the six years I lived there — a period in which I found my calling and found your mother. (And yes, I love the rain. I love, love, love, love, love the rain.)

Or maybe it's that, for most of my life, Utah was little more than an endless plain of salt, a stinky lake, a boring desert, a place so desolate that, after being run out of every other town on the continent, a sect of religious fundamentalists managed to form its own polygamous nation without anyone really noticing or caring, because — hey — it was only Utah.

 

So for all the effort this state has put into re-marketing itself — and it is true, absolutely true, that Utah has "the greatest snow on Earth" — I just couldn't bring myself to call myself a Utahn. 

But you? You were ... 

... are ... 

... forever will be ...

... oh holy heck ...

... fer goodness sake ... 

... gol' dang't fetch ...

... a Utahn. 

At least, that's what your social security card says. I resolved, however, to raise you up like the west-coaster I know you really are.

But there's nature... 

... and there's nurture ...

... and then there is everything else.

And today you reminded me that no matter how hard your mother and I try, there will be parts of this place that will seep into your veins, that will course through your body and that will, alas, confirm that three-digit prefix is accurate. 

It was no small slap in the face that all you did, to make me realize all of that, was to repeat something I said. 

We were at the dinner table and your mother passed me a napkin.

"Thanks," I said, wiping the corner of my mouth. " 'preciate it."

" 'preciate it!" you repeated. 

I dropped the napkin and stared at you.

" 'preciate it!" you said again. " 'preciate it!"

I shook my head. Your mother laughed hysterically. And you just beamed. 

We're Utahns.

Fine.

But if you ever so much as think of cheering for BYU, you'll be out on the street faster than you can say "Provo." 

Love,

dad