The 3 Word Journal

Topic: Deceit

Year Experience Occurred: 1981

3 Word Summary of Experience: Nathan Marijuana Plant

Written Experience:

When our son Nathan was eight years old he came in from playing outside, carrying a large potted plant. He excitedly told his mother that he was giving it to her as a present. Of course the first thing we asked him was where he got this special gift. He told us he found it in a clearing behind our home. The plant was about five feet tall and very green and healthy. This just didn’t make sense to me. It was obvious that someone had taken good care of the plant. It was even in a nice container. After further questioning, we had our son show us exactly where he found the plant. We couldn’t imagine how the plant got there or who took such good care of it, but we were convinced that our son really found it behind our house.

We decided to put the plant in our living room, next to our sofa. It looked very nice there. We have frequent visitors to our home, and several people (including our home teachers and several ward and stake leaders) commented on how nice the plant looked in our living room. But there was something about the plant that never seemed right. Maybe it was the strange smell that was always apparent when you sat near it, or the strange feeling we got as we looked closely at it. It looked more like a healthy weed than anything else. Finally, after about a month, I pulled down a book to see if I could identify what kind of plant we were tending. I flipped through the pages until I finally spotted a plant that looked exactly like ours. I checked closely to be sure. I even pulled off one of the leaves and put it on the kitchen stove burner. There was no question about it. We had in our living room a healthy, five-foot-tall marijuana plant. We were so naive, we not only harbored the plant in our living room, but we invited friends and family to sit in its shade!

Lessons Learned: This experience helped me see that it is possible to have things in our homes that are inappropriate and even dangerous, yet either not notice or attend to them. If we are to make it through life safely, we must look closely at our actions and the environment with which we surround ourselves.