Family Feud

When I was 16, I worked at a live theater as an usher. I never thought I'd be on stage and was perfectly content to help people find their seats, but there was one show that needed a transition while the female lead "had a baby" off stage. They enlisted my friend and me to pretend we were FAO Schwarz employees delivering toys around the apartment.

(Tangent)
Does anyone want my autograph now?

Or maybe I should clarify ...

Does anyone who doesn't want to steal my identity want my autograph now?
(End Tangent)

I don't even think we did it for pay. I think we were just giddy enough to do it for the fun of it.

The upshot was that we were invited to the cast party after the show finished.

While the entire party was better than chocolate, brownies and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups combined, there is one part of the evening that will forever be burned into my memory.

Family Feud, the board game.



My team was managing pretty well until one fateful question: What do people associate most with Mormons?

I was so excited, I nearly wet my pants. Out of the entire room, I was the only Mormon.

I SO had this in the bag. I may have even said that to my team members.

With the complete confidence of the national spelling bee champion whose final word was cat (C-A-T), I gave our first guess for the board.

"The Book of Mormon!"

It even had Mormon in the answer.

... That's when the game moderator gave me the first X.

The Book of Mormon didn't even make it into the top 5 answers.

Trying not to feel shaken, I took my second stab.

"Joseph Smith."

And that was strike two. At this point, my palms started to sweat and I began worrying about all the jokes I'd get about not knowing my own religion.

We had one more guess, and my last guess was one of desperation.

"Brigham Young?"

That third X was particularly harsh.

So, what was the top answer?

The number one thing people associate with Mormons is: The Osmond Family