POST-MORMON STORIES
The Long and Winding Road to Idaho
A homesick Mormon missionary embarks on an elaborate quest to get sent home without imperiling his soul. Easier said than done, on both counts.
An abbreviated version of this essay was first performed April 17, 2013, for The First Time: First Crime at Second City Chicago’s Up Comedy Club. The story is told more fully in my 2015 memoir, The Accidental Terrorist: Confessions of a Reluctant Missionary.
They caught up with me in a bus station men’s room in Great Falls, Montana.
Now, given that they were after me, you might assume I was on the run from the police, or maybe the Mob — but the truth was an unholy combination of the two. I was on the run from the Mormon Church.
It all started in Utah in 1986. I was the firstborn in a modestly sized Mormon family of eight children. We were devout, which meant more than just no coffee, no tea, and no television on Sundays. The expectation in my family was that all the boys would go on a mission when they turned nineteen, giving up all worldly pursuits to preach the gospel of Joseph Smith in some remote corner of the globe for two years. It’s kind of like the Mormon Peace Corps, but without the possibility of hooking up.
