Confessions of an Embarrassing Kind

When at conference they read the names of prominent members of the church who had recently passed away, one name stood out to me much more than the others.

Robert J. Matthews.

Brother Matthews was a scholar, author, former dean of the college of Religious Instruction at BYU, first president of the Mt. Timpanogos Temple, the church's foremost authority on the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible, and . . . my former boss.



And being my boss is where the the embarrassing moment comes in.



Many years ago, when I was a young girl in college, I worked in the dean's office. One day I had to go into the storage closet to get some paper for the copy machine. The storage closet was fairly wide, but boxes had piled up so thick on each side, that at one point there was only enough room for one person to walk at a time.



As I entered, I saw there was a young man, also an employee, who had been restocking the shelves at the back of the closet and was now ready to leave. Just to tease him, I walked forward and stood in the narrow area, blocking his exit. When I refused to move, he reached out and placed his hands on my waist in an effort to physically move me out of his way.



Just then Brother Matthews entered the closet. And what he thought he saw, was me standing in the closet in an embrace with a fellow employee!



Immediately he apologized for the intrusion and quickly left, closing the door behind him.



While the young man, who worked in the basement and far away from Brother Matthews, was rolled over with laughter, I prayed for a hole to open up in the floor to swallow me.



It didn't happen. And so I timidly went back to my desk--in his office--where I tried to be very inconspicuous for the rest of the afternoon.



I never explained the situation to him. I was too embarrassed to even bring it up. I just prayed he had short term memory loss--especially when years later he became good friends with my father.