When I turned twelve my dad took me to my first priesthood session of general conference. Even though we lived in Utah we attended the broadcast at our local stake center. I honestly don’t remember who spoke or what they said. The only thing I remember from that night is that as soon as the closing song began about 25 of the men and their sons got up and left. I thought that was so strange.
I shrugged it off, figuring they had some urgent appointment they had to get to. Boy was I naive. Turns out they were headed over to our ward house so they could beat the rush to the after-priesthood ice cream social. I was only 12 but somehow I knew that was tacky. Unfortunately it wasn’t a onetime thing. Year after year I can set my watch to the folks leaving right as the closing song starts.
It doesn’t just happen at priesthood meetings either. When my wife saw what I was writing about she excitedly told me her own story. She attended a regional primary meeting about a month ago. When the last speaker got up he said, “It looks like we will be letting you go a little bit early tonight.” As soon as those words were out of his mouth 30 people got up and headed to the exits…WHILE HE WAS STILL SPEAKING!!! My wife says it was very noisy and distracting, especially because of the ‘clonky’ women’s shoes on the hardwood floor.
I don’t know why this bothers me so much but apparently it bothered Joseph Smith too. I have this fantasy where President Monson gets these people off my lawn by throwing out the quote below during his closing address of priesthood.
President Joseph Smith said: “As president of this house, I forbid any man leaving just as we are going to close the meeting. He is no gentleman who will do it. I don’t care who does it, even if it were the king of England. I forbid it.” (April 16, 1843) DHC 5:360-363
I’d like to pose a question to the out of state Cultural Hall readers. Does this sort of thing happen in your neck of the woods? In other words, is this a Utah thing or is it a Mormon thing? I’d appreciate your response on this topic.
Tacky is not quite the right word. How about … low-life, thoughtless, insensitive (a redundancy), rude, juvenile, WT, inexcusable?
Mormon thing.
This also happens in Georgia. It seems most often the people leaving sacrament meeting are teachers or primary leaders. There’s a reason there is time between meetings, to allow for teachers to get to class and set up. There shouldn’t be a need to leave sacrament meeting early.
Leaving the larger meetings early to beat “traffic” is also silly. Will that extra 3 minutes make a difference in your day?
It’s not just leaving meetings early. How many people walk in late to meetings. Have you heard of “mormon” standard time? It’s suppose to be funny, but really it’s sad that people are so selfish and disrespectful. Another word for reverence is respect.