Eli McCann

This piece was originally published by The Beehive. I was just about to leave work for the day when my husband called me. “Class has been canceled. They’re sending

This piece was originally published by The Beehive. I sat on the grass near Brigham Young’s grave as a bologna sandwich that had been prepared by a handful of

This piece was originally published by The Beehive. When I first met my husband in 2015, he was living in another state. We did the long distance thing for a

I was eight years old when I was first introduced to Classic Skating. A neighborhood mom had called my mom to let her know they’d be celebrating her son’s birthday over roller skates and outdated rock music in the local roller rink.

Just before my 8th birthday I was shoved into the neighbor lady’s house down at the end of the street for my first Cub Scout meeting. My friends were there, all boys around my age in half-tucked-in dark blue buttoned-up shirts adorned with patches that looked like sloppily-sewn postage stamps.

I was in high school when the massive Jordan Commons complex sprouted off of State Street in Sandy.

In late September of 2001, just a couple of weeks after the 9/11 attacks, I was sent a mass email with the full text of an article from The

Three years ago during a particularly stressful few months with my job I got a little dog from a small rescue organization.

The hot young people hardly older than us were a televised testament that we too could be trusted to navigate complicated adulthood.

In 1993, Jordan Ridge Elementary School revamped its earthquake training efforts.

At this point I hadn’t told anyone I was gay, and I certainly wasn’t tempted to consider it at BYU.

As of the date you are reading this, there are over 19,000 articles on major websites across the internet that start with the line, “Today we are more connected than ever, but people feel more disconnected than at any other time.”

“She met him through the internet,” I heard a woman whisper in the tone of scandal. This was 1999 and I was fifteen. The woman was a family friend, and she was gossiping about a mutual acquaintance who recently found love.

My father issued the decision in the tone of a president contemplating war. My mother nodded slightly as he spoke, her lips pursed, her hands resting dignified on her lap.

It started right after the first Father of the Bride movie came out, a film that, if turned into a lightbulb, would most definitely be called “Hue White.”

There I stood; swayed, really. I was eight years old, in an ascending line curving up a long ramp into a domed rotunda. My parents insisted we stop by and say hello to the eleven-foot statue up top.

Things were fine. Birds nested in trees and the sun glistened off of The Great Salt Lake. The valley was peaceful. Almost too peaceful. And then one day a sign was hung.

When I was seven, I thought my family was living at the base of several volcanoes. I was a worrier and used a lot of my anxious energy in the early 90s imagining what we would do if the entire Salt Lake Valley suddenly filled with lava.

My friend Hannah and I started a tradition some time ago of getting season passes every year and we both think the other would be devastated if we stopped doing this so neither of us has backed out.