Guest Post: The Taco Solution

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Richard Tait is the proud father of a returned-missionary son attending BYU-Idaho, and a beautiful high school senior daughter. He has been married to the same woman for 25 years, and its been the best 22 years of his life. Richard writes for his own blog, Mormon Third Eye, where he talks about the Third Eye ... the notorious eye in the back of the head, or the extra view of life that God blesses parents striving to do the right thing with so they can see more of life than the children they chase after. Amazingly, Richard hasn't missed a weekend post in over 200 weeks, a streak that started soon after he was released as Seattle Jon's bishop in Maryland.

WARNING: IF YOU’RE A TEENAGER, YOU’LL BE BORED BY WHAT YOU READ NEXT; SAVE YOURSELF BY TURNING AWAY AND GOING BACK TO YOUR VIDEO GAME!!

Readers, don’t be scared by the above disclaimer- its only purpose was to clear the decks for discussing a seemingly underhanded, yet practical and effective solution to keeping your teenage children morally clean before they get married. I know it works, because I was a guinea pig when it was field tested too many decades ago. I feel compelled to bless the sliver of humanity who read this blog by passing down the solution to successive generations; just make sure that anyone old enough to process what I’m about to present is too busy at the moment doing something else more important, like history homework.

The answer is … the Taco Solution.

I grew up in the middle of seven brothers and sisters, six of whom had approximately one-year gaps in their physical ages. So, when the torrent of teenage hormones ran like a “river of fire” through our family, it was more of a Katrina-like experience rather than a gentle trickle. But our parents were prepared. Why? Because years earlier, when we were on the playground throwing sand in the faces of the opposite sex, they envisioned the day when we would be yearning to spend more time alone with the faces of the opposite sex, so on Saturday nights they started feeding us tacos.

These were not normal tacos. These were meaty, spicy, fire-breathing tacos that should have been registered with the local fire department. By the time we had reached the terrible teens, we had been programmed that the whole world sat down on Saturday nights to eat tacos.

In the fairy-tale world of teenage mormondom in Northern California, the preferred path for satisfying those mystifying desires to hang out with pretty gals and handsome guys was the Saturday night dance. Most of our Saturday nights were spent either attending a stake or regional dance, or plotting to attend one.

However, before our parents let us leave the house, we had to eat our traditional fire-breathing tacos. It’s naturally hard to get close enough to a pretty gal or handsome guy to get yourself in trouble when your breath is nasty enough to create a ten-foot teenage force field around you. Nephites could have defended themselves against the generational anger of a slighted Lamanite nation with the awesome power of the red hot taco.

So, parents, especially those with kids barely old enough to damage your Sunday best with a power burp, start mixing up those hot and nasty delicacies and get them used to consuming them on early Saturday evenings. Like all effective strategies for maintaining moral cleanliness, its essential to start early, before they turn eight and the adversary begins to turn the world against them (does Gerber make a blended taco baby-food flavor?)

By the time they turn 14, the Saturday night hot n’nasty taco tradition may be one of the most powerful tools in your teenage-taming arsenal!