swing, batter batter

17. SOFTBALL: Marilyn put me in tee-ball at a local family center when i was 5. i played in jeans and keds which i thought was fine at the time but now i realize all the other girls had white baseball pants and baseball belts and baseball socks and cleats. I'd like to blame my slightly above mediocre softball performance of today to lack of gear when i was younger :) I remember picking flowers in the outfield with Meg Harris (like any 5 year old girl could really hit it to the outfield) and also running to first base, my helmet falling off, going back to get the helmet, and then running to base and still was safe! After t-ball, i played a few years in little league-VFW the first year and Flicks (local video store) the next year. I can't remember if Flicks was my last year playing but it might have been. I've always really enjoyed playing and being a part of a team, but I never really became a star player. At BYU, I played a few intramural years, then a few church leagues and a city league the last 3 years. I'm most comfortable with catcher but like 2nd base as well. We all know I'm a little accident prone so I included some pics of softball injuries. 3rd Base (my current team) had a double-header last night and I meant to get a team photo but I'll get it next week and post it then.

i still stand like this when i bat

i'm second from the left, back row with the ill-fitted hat that appears to be bigger than everyone else's.

look for the blue glove--i wanted one to match my jersey :)

biggest bruise i ever had--took one in the leg running from left field to catch a ball

took one to the face covering second base on a wicked hop. the right side of my face appeared to be falling off for a few weeks

i loved being in the grocery and getting those sympathetic looks from the ladies that said "you can leave him--let me help you"

my birthday was a few days after the incident. my birthday card was a signed softball from my friends accompanied with black and blue balloons

3rd Base-Season 2

more late-night antics

18. PRANK WAR
When I was living in the Brick House at BYU, we became really good friends with a group of boys across the street at the Elms. They had a foos ball table and we decided we wanted it. So we stole it, thus ensuing a short-lived prank war. Getting the foos ball table out of their apartment was a festivus miracle in and of itself. Earlier in the day, we had stopped by and casually unlocked the sliding glass door that went onto the 3rd floor balcony of their apartment. We went back at 3 AM and Amylee skillfully scaled the wall, climbed over the balcony and unlocked the front door for the rest of us. We shut the door between the living room and the hallway to the bedrooms and luckily the air conditioning was on providing a little bit of a noise shield. We were armed with the necessary tools to dissemble the table and it probably took us a good ten minutes to do it. With 6 boys in that apartment, i don't know how one of them didn't wake up. It was extremely heavy but the 3 of us managed to get it down 3 flights of stairs and across the street. Apparently, someone across the hall saw us taking it down the stairs and didn't think to alert them or question us. We managed to keep it hidden and keep mum about it for a week. It was our greatest heist ever. They retaliated with a wall of popcorn falling into our front door and stealing our family photos from the mantle. We then broke into their house again, turning everything in the living room upside down. They had a mural of magazine pages from sports illustrated and espn and we even turned every single page upside down. It kind of fizzled after that, but I'd like to think that the girls won. We totally won.

i love basketball. take it to the hoop for 2 points baby

the title should be read to the tune of "i love rock and roll" by joan jett.
19. BASKETBALL
it was freshman year. I was waiting for marilyn to come pick me up after school and was talking to some girls who were headed to the freshman boy's basketball game later that evening. It was an away game and I can't even remember where it was--maybe Marlin? Anyway, after i got in the car, Kylie chased me down and invited me to go with them. And this was the beginning of our little basketball fan club. We LOVED these boys. I think each of us had a crush on someone different. But we were the best cheerleaders ever. We went to every game--home and away. We even put an ad in the basketball program--there were several poses to choose from :) The parents loved us and even bought us t-shirts. I remember one game, I was dared $20 to run down on the floor and take a shot while the teams were warming up after halftime. Of course I did it and then felt utterly stupid after the ref had to stop the game after he spotted something on the floor. Oh, it was my earring and I had to sheepishly ask for it back after the game. I also recall singing at the top of our lungs "Sign" by Ace of Base and "One Last Cry" by Brian McKnight. We were such silly girls. Sophomore and junior year, we weren't as dedicated but we picked back up senior year. To Adam, Brent, Charlie, Nolan, Derek, Jim, Greg & Cory--it's great to be an MHS panther!

if you're wondering why there are no picture of the actual basketball team, it's because there are none. I don't think we ever took one photo with the team or any member of the team thereof.

hot cross buns

20. Cello and Piano. what do you do with a 3 year old? you put them in cello lessons! Mom put me in cello lessons at a Suzuki String School at Baylor when I was 3 and I did that for 3 years. I remember performing at the elementary school Christmas program even before I was even in elementary school in what i thought was the prettiest little frilly dress. Luckily, Marilyn still has it. I also loved the white, heart-shaped wood stopper that Phil made for me to use with my miniature cello (even at a quarter size, the thing was still bigger than me). And then I took piano lessons from 6-17. 11 years of piano lessons can churn out exceptional pianists, but sadly, I am not one of them :) I play okay--most of the hymns but I definitely don't feel comortable sight-reading or being an accompanist. Music was an integral part of the Johnson household. You can see the two pianos and organ in the below picture. We also housed a large xylophone for a few months. I wish I had more piano pics--I participated in a number of contests as well as ensembles. I remember getting to wear an off-the-shoulder red saloon-girl dress one year and thinking it was the greatest thing ever! I took a state theory test every year and I had the most wonderful piano teacher ever. Dr. Ruth Pitts--a very petite woman who had severely deformed hands: 3 fingers on one hand and 2 on the other. She was a pretty unlikely candidate for a degree in piano pedagogy (real fancy word for education or method) but a gem nonetheless and a beautiful pianist. I always hated the phrase "you'll thank me for this one day" but it could not ring more true. Although, I'm not execeptionally gifted, I love that I can play the piano and love that I played the cello. Thanks Mom for making me stick with it.

(they even put me on the brochure)

so i can't count

well it turns out that when i started this whole project there were actually 24 days until my birthday, not 22. eventually i'll go back through and renumber the other 3.

21. SNEAKING OUT
Dear Mom and Dad, I used to sneak out of the house. I’d come home, park the car, close the garage, say goodnight and then walk right out the front or sliding glass door. You might have known this but just in case you didn’t…..

1. to shoe polish cars—we had already graduated but it was the night before the senior class (the year below us) was to start their senior year. We didn’t care for many of the girls in that class so we decided to go shoe polish their cars. What we didn’t know is that they had already done so but all cute-like and in school colors. I hate that we were so mean, but we blacked out every single one of their windows. this took most of the night and i think in all there were about 12-14 cars. I know that was super awful but we thought we were so cool at the time. Ugh-I even feel guilty as I type this out….

nothing celebrates criminal activity more than a photo op at the port-a-potty

a line from "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"

2. to take out Megan’s mom’s convertible in the middle of a unseasonably cold December. We ended up busting the convertible top—the back window shattered halfway putting the top down. I had to lay across it driving home just so that Megan could see. Again, not one of our finest moments. If I remember correctly, there was some prank calling on my mom’s brick of a cell phone to a party down the street.

4 of the scariest, white, middle-class, teenage girls you'll ever find :)

there are no words

3. to help Jenny with her paper route—due to the greatness that was IM in it’s early days, Jenny, Jerod, Boyd and I decided to go help Jen with her paper route at 3 AM. Hilarious. We also saw a domestic dispute at the IHOP. We decided a meal was in order after we were done.

yes, mom. that was your car

waco tribune, anyone?

4. after graduation—there was another poor soul we didn’t care for and we decided to toilet paper her house (side note: Marilyn worked for Kimberly Clark—a company that makes paper products such as Kleenex, Cottonelle, Kotex, etc…so we had ample supply of that kind of stuff) why were we so mean??

the finest that the class of '97 had to offer

those are exactly what you think they are

5. to go to Good Morning America in Austin—I still remember Jenny tapping on the sliding glass door in the middle of the night—scared me half to death. She wanted to know if I wanted to come with her and Boyd to the taping of GMA at the University of Texas campus. I thought sure, why not. I left a note on the kitchen table that said “spent the night at Jenny’s” so marilyn wouldn’t worry when I was nowhere to be found. It was a torrential downpour the whole way there. Boyd’s winsdshield wiper was busted but due to a paperclip and some dental floss, we were able to fix it. Must have been all those years I watched MacGyver. Thank you Richard Dean Anderson

6. there were a few others—we pushed dad’s car (we called it the velveteen rabbit. It was a silver Chrysler 5th avenue that had red velvet interior) out the driveway, pushed it down the street and started it so that my parents didn’t hear it to go pick up the video at Julie’s house of our senior party earlier that day. (shout out to Jen who sent me these pics after I posted. so glad you had these--didn't even remember that they existed :)

We were kind of mean but at least I wasn’t drinking, doing drugs or getting pregnant. It could have been worse. I turned out just fine.

Love, nancy

wait for it

posts are coming....i promise...

we leave Jesus on the sidelines

20. TEAM SONIC
I love being on a team or part of a group and one of my all-time favorites is Team Sonic--My BYU intramural football team for two years. Attaining a BYU champ intramural t-shirt is kind of a big deal and our second year, we could taste it we were so close. but to no avail. we were defeated in the semi-finals. Team Sonic-ladies was created after our good friends Team Sonic-boys wanted to have a girls team and two of their best, Spencer and Garrett, became our loyal coaches. They were awesome and spent so much time with us running drills and learning plays. Our book consisted of sunny side up, gangsta left and the statue of liberty and all sorts of great plays. We were a good team--strong in both our running and passing game :) Football is probably one of my favorite sports still to play. I got to play with some of my dearest friends/roommates and Les even joined the team our second year as a QB. Some of my fondest memories were on those fields...a few are:
1. Katie's pants falling to her ankles as she ran to the endzone. she didn't stop and got us 6 points
2. Gina's "we'll never figure out how she managed to catch that" winning touchdown sending us to the quarter-finals
3. my only physical altercation with a girl (long story but my roommate snottily says to the girl "What would Jesus do?" to which her equally snotty response was "This is football-we leave Jesus on the sidelines")
4. catching an interception
5. playing in the snow, rain, mud, etc...

Here's a few pics--the scanner is not that great so the pics aren't that great...

Run. Drive. Sleep? Repeat.

21. RAGNAR RELAY-Wasatch Back
This too occurred because of my fomo and inability to say no. I agreed to run a race with 11 of my co-workers. I'm not a runner and really don't even like to run but i just couldn't pass it up. and it's not a normal race. It's an all day and all night and all day again affair run relay style. You have 12 runners, 2 vans, 36 legs. Each runner runs 3 legs, varying in length and difficulty. For example, I was runner 12 so I ran legs 12 (3.1 miles uphill), 24 (5.1 miles slightly uphill), and 36 (5.2 miles mostly downhill). I hung out in a van with 5 other peeps for about 30 hours. Crazy, huh? I loved every second of it and would do it again no question.

Everyone gets really into it and you have team names and themes and some wear costumes and you decorate your vans, etc... We came up with a play on words for what our firm does and we were the LEVERAGED SELL-OUTS. We thought we were so clever until it dawned on us that no one else would get it. Next year we'll be something more universal like "Queens of Sole" or "Running on Empty". Anyway, our theme was money and we all had bling dollar sign chains and we put fake money all over the van. The race was long and difficult, but I finished. we all finished. I wasn't "that girl". Well, kind of. I was the slowest but I crossed the finish line and that is all that mattered.

decorating the van

hanging out in the van

$17 well spent

(the disney fan/spray bottle came in handy but the foam blades didn't last too long)

home

my first run. i'm about 14 seconds in and i remember wanting to be done

halfway there...

finally...the hand-off

middle of the night

chasing down Josh with water. it was so dark i didn't know it was him until he ran by

what was left of our antenna mascot

i was trying to motivate wendi through dance. aren't i graceful?

the finish line!

yeah, we're done!

The Leveraged Sell-Outs