MormonSpeak: The law of life

I'm not especially fond of snakes.

No, that's not right. I can't stand snakes.

No, that's still not right. I hate them.

No, "hate" isn't right, either. What is the right word? Loathe? Despise? Abhor? Detest? Fear?

Yes, that's it. Fear. I fear snakes. I fear them a lot.

Now, I know this is not a manly thing to admit. Men are not supposed to be afraid of such things. After all, little boys are made of "snakes and snails," aren't they?

Which reminds me, I'm not especially fond of escargot, either.

But snakes scare me to death. I nearly walked out of the first "Indiana Jones" movie when the Nazis threw Indy and his female companion into the pit filled with snakes (only Nazis could be that diabolical). The shot of the snake slithering out of the statue's mouth just about did me in. "One more snake," I told my date, "and I'm outta here."

Thankfully, snakesmanship wasn't a high priority with my date. She married me anyway.

Not too long ago I was walking along a mountain road with my two youngest children when we came upon a small garter snake sunning itself on the pavement. I ran screaming to the other side of the road, startling the snake into a forked-tongued frenzy and sending Jon and Elizabeth into a fit of hysterical laughter. They thought I was trying to be funny.

I wasn't.

That said, there is one thing that I find fascinating about snakes. Two or three times each year, they go through a process called "molting," during which they slither out of their scaly old skin and emerge to face the world in a scaly new skin — repulsive though it may be. According to hissologists (or whatever you call people who study such things), snakes don't shed their skins for aesthetics. There are important physiological factors having to do with their growth and development. Simply stated, if snakes don't make this change on a regular basis, they will die.

The same is true for humans, I think. Not the skin thing. The change thing. If we don't make changes on a regular basis, we'll die. At the very least, we'll stop growing and developing, which is sort of like dying — only without the peace.