Sometimes I'm an Idiot

My friend Melissa got home from her mission in July 2011.  A month later I made the two hour drive from my parents’ house to her house.  It was the first time I had seen her in 18 months and I was excited to hang out.  When I got to her house she said, “I’ve got something really fun planned for us to do.  We’re going to bake cookies and take them to lonely people.”  I thought that was an awful idea and my words and mood made that evident.  I had just driven for two hours and now I was supposed to go visit lonely people that I didn’t know.  I was not a happy camper.  Melissa, however, would not be swayed and we baked a nice batch of chocolate chip cookies and visited some lonely people.

Melissa said that we were going to visit her new friend Karen.  On the drive over to Karen's house Melissa explained to me that she talks a lot.  I said, “So she’s weird?” and Melissa responded, “She just needs the gospel in her life.”  I was now even less interested in visiting this lonely stranger.  Karen was a member of the church, but hadn’t been active for quite some time.  I had a really bad attitude about the whole experience until we entered Karen’s home.  Melissa was right, not only did Karen talk a ton, but so did her boyfriend.  Her boyfriend was not a member of the church ans was not interested in it at all.  To make a complicated story very simple, by the time we left, Karen was making plans to return to church and her boyfriend had excitedly agreed to meet with the missionaries.  I was flabbergasted.

When Melissa and I left the house I said, “Wow, I wasn’t expecting that!”  Melissa said, “Can we say a prayer?  I want to thank Heavenly Father for what just happened.”  I was a little surprised because my friends don’t usually ask me to say prayers of gratitude with them, but we did.  I was so amazed by the experience because our mere presence in their house had blessed their lives and I felt immensely stupid for not wanting to go earlier.  As we were talking about the experience on the drive home Melissa said, “For the rest of my life all I want to do is be an instrument in God’s hands.”  What she said is so simple and it gave me a new goal.

At that time I had just recently graduated from BYU and had not yet found a job.  For weeks I’d been telling people that all I wanted was to get a job.  I’d said, “All I want is to get a job,” so frequently and to so many people that when Melissa said, “All I want…” my mind immediately went to what I had been saying for weeks.  And then when she finished her sentence with, “… is be an instrument in God’s hands,” I felt a need to change.  My statement, contrasted with Melissa’s statement helped me to see how selfish I can be.  I’d been focusing on me and on what I need when I should have been focusing on others.

This is the story that ran through my mind as I watched the first session of General Conference this morning alone in my living room.  If you don’t know what General Conference is click here.  In the very first talk President Monson announced that a temple would be built in my new home of Tucson (you can watch that clip here).  It was a happy moment.  And then he announced a change in missionary policy.  Before, men could serve missions at the age of 19 and women at the age of 21.  Effective today, men can leave at age 18 and women at age 19.  I don’t cry much, but when President Monson announced this I started to cry.  They were tears of joy, of course.

While Melissa was on her mission her mom forwarded her weekly emails to me and I read them every week.  She was a marvelous missionary.  I currently have two very good female friends serving missions in Taiwan and Russia.  I read their emails home, too and they are stupendous missionaries.  They had both wanted to serve missions for years and couldn’t wait until they turned 21.  They would have left years earlier had they been able to.  And now, women don’t have to wait until they are 21.  I imagine a lot more women will be going on missions now.

When I was 18 and a freshman at BYU, my friend Aaron and I hiked to the Y on one of our first nights in Provo.  It was our first time living away from home and we talked a lot about the changes in our lives and how much we wanted to go on missions.  We both expressed that we didn’t want to wait until we were 19, we wanted to go right then.  I was really impatient and didn't want to have to wait any longer.  I felt ready for the challenge of a mission and couldn't wait to go.  Had I been allowed to leave when I was 18 I would have, but I had to wait six more months.  And now, those boys who are anxious to go out and serve don’t have to wait.  It’s so awesome.

This policy change is going to be an enormous blessing to the young people who serve missions and to the people of the world who will be taught by them.  I cried because this felt so right.  The army of Helaman (who missionaries are often compared to) has always been young, but it just got a little younger, and I imagine it’s going to grow a lot, too.  Today was a great day for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and I’m pumped for the final two sessions of conference tomorrow.

The Morales family.  They are very happy people,
I promise.  Mexicans often don't make cheesy
smiles in pictures like Americans do.

Note: I was going to add a picture from my mission, but I realized that I don't have any digital copies of my mission pictures (that's right, I had an old fashioned camera back then).  So here's a picture from when I went back to visit my mission in 2009.  This is the Morales family, some of my favorite people in the whole world.  

Backyard Bleating

My backyard is not landscaped at all.  Kevin, my roommate and landlord, isn’t interested in doing anything with it so it just sits there, growing weeds.  Since we live in the desert it’s mostly just dirt, but a large amount of grass has grown up around the edge of the porch.  Kevin cut it all down with a weed eater once, but then it grew back (as grass is wont to do).  The solution to growing grass?  Get a goat.

The offensively tall grass

Kevin's friend Luis recently bought a goat to eat the weeds in his backyard and keep the grass trimmed.  I’ve been to Luis’s house and the goat does a pretty stellar job.  The grass in our backyard has gotten pretty tall and Kevin didn’t want to cut it again so Luis offered to lend us his goat. 

I thought the whole idea of getting a goat was pretty silly since it would only take a few minutes to weed eat the grass, but I don’t own the house so I went along with it.  Once we got the goat, however, I was completely in favor of it.  Luis’s goat is a pygmy goat so he’s small, about the size of a dog, which makes him look very adorable.  I also enjoy looking out the kitchen window and watching him stare at me while he endlessly chews in a circular motion with grass hanging out of his mouth.  He really, really wants to come in the house and tries to follow us in every time we leave the backyard.  Yesterday after Kevin and I both came in he got up on his hind legs and started scratching at the doorknob.  My greatest fear is being realized, he’s learning how to open doors just like the raptors in Jurassic Park did. 

Here he is, eating the grass like a good little goat

He doesn't have a name, but I call him Plutarco
(it's an old Mexican name and it suits him)

The goat and I have become pretty good friends.  He spends all day alone in the backyard so I go out and pet him at least once a day.  He seems to really like me and follows me everywhere I go.  I exploit this for my own amusement.  Since I know he’s going to follow me I purposely walk over things that I know he’ll have to jump over because I like to see him jump.  A typical afternoon in the backyard includes me jumping over the tall grass, followed by the goat jumping over the grass, followed by me jumping back over the grass, followed by the goat jumping back over the grass, etc.  I wish I could say that we usually play this game until I get bored of it, but we usually play until the goat gets bored of it.

Just a friend coming to say hello

Today as I was trying to feed a handful of grass I had just picked to the goat, the thought came to my mind that my life is starting to resemble a foreign film.  The kind of movie where something quirky and unexpected happens to the protagonist, but there really is no story line or point to the film -- just a dude hanging out with a goat.

On a non-goat related note, we spent a few hours on Saturday "landscaping" the front yard with rocks.  Before the front yard had a wooden fence, a lot of dirt, and a fair number of weeds.  It reminded me of the wild west.  Now our yard is just rocks and while it looks cleaner, I can't help but think that it looks like a parking lot at corn maze.

Here's what the yard looked like before (looking from the porch)

Here's what it looks like now (looking from the street)

My Only Hope

Last Wednesday I was nominated for a position in SLATSA, my program’s student association.  I don’t know who nominated me or why, but it was a flattering surprise.  The position mostly involved fundraising and writing grant proposal which not only do I have zero experience in, but they don’t seem very fun either.  I emailed the SLATSA president and told him that I didn’t think I was the ideal candidate due to my lack of experience, but he told me to accept the nomination anyway.  So I did, but mostly because I don’t have a job and I need some way to support Thai food eating habit. 

Now that I was nominated I just had to win the election to get the position.  On Thursday I got the same email that everyone in my program received telling us how to vote.  The voting process involved six steps (including making a login name and password) and I wasn’t feeling up to the complicated voting procedure at the time so I put the email in my procrastination file (that means that I starred it for later). 

On Friday mornings I have a three hour long class with all the first years in my program.  We have a break in the middle of class that usually involves cookies.  As soon as the break started I stood up and exclaimed, “I love cookies so much!” as I walked to the cookie table.  While chomping down on my second or third cookie Hope walked up to me and said, “So I guess this is where we both wish each other luck on the election.”  I said, “Oh, you’re running, too?”  (I would have figured that out if I had already voted).  We chatted briefly about the position and it turns out that she didn’t feel super-qualified for it either. 

One of my friends in the class overheard my conversation with Hope and asked me why I was applying for the position.  I said, “I just need a way to earn some money,” to which he replied, “You do realize that it isn’t a paid job?”  No, actually, I hadn’t realized that.  You see, there was a different position on a different student council that was paid and I had gotten the two mixed up and had somehow agreed to do something that I didn’t want to do for free (and I wasn’t really that thrilled to do it for $12 an hour either).  I allowed myself to briefly feel like an idiot.

Newly infused with the power of three cookies and worried that I might have to do extra work for free, I came up with a plan to not win the election.  In all honesty, I probably didn’t need a plan because Hope is a phenomenal student and well liked by everyone and probably would have won anyway, but I came up with a plan nonetheless.  Hope was now my only hope of getting out of doing more work for zero dollars.  Our program isn’t super-big and considering the cumbersome voting process I assumed that few people would vote.  This meant that not winning would be easy.  Instead of giving my full attention to the lecture I took a few minutes to vote for Hope and then emailed Josh and told him to vote for Hope, too, which he did.  I assumed (and hoped) that those two votes would be enough to lose.  Later that night I received the following the email: “CONGRATULATIONS to HOPE for winning the position and thank you all for your support and participation." I was relieved, very relieved.  And plus, Hope will do a great job and it will look great on her resume and I can spend more time watching House Hunters International.  There was Hope for me.  Indeed, there is Hope for us all.   

O Remember, Remember

One of my greatest regrets is that I didn't keep a better journal while I was on my mission in Mexico.  I did well at the beginning, but I got so busy that I decided I didn't have the time to write and so I stopped (I know, I know, I'm an idiot).  A few years later I was reading through my mission journal and I was surprised (and rather saddened) by how many experiences I had recorded that I had forgotten about entirely.  There were people that I named that I had no recollection of, but who at the time were important enough that I wrote about them.

Since that day I have thought a lot about forgetting.  I've heard people claim to have good memories, but the truth is that they don't know if they have good memories or not because no one can know what they've forgotten.  Around this time I heard a talk by Elder Eyring in which he urged us to write about how we saw the hand of God in our lives each day.  As a result of that talk I committed to write in my journal every day and I've been a faithful record keeper ever since.  I started out thinking that some day my children or grandchildren would be interested in reading about my life, but I've come to see that I'm the one who truly benefits.

Before I moved to Arizona I knew it would be hard at first and it has been hard, but it's been hard in different ways than I had expected.  A few days ago I was hit with some particularly bad news and I was feeling pretty down.  I decided to flip through one of my old journals and I found some entries that I had completely forgotten about that I had written when I was a camp counselor at EFY.  Remembering these experiences completely changed my mood from feeling sorry for myself to being grateful.  Maybe they won't mean anything to you because you didn't live these experiences, but they were poignant reminders to me.  Here are some out of context snippets from those entries:


8 June 2010, Tuesday
One thing that I want to remember is the dance competition from today.  About a dozen people danced in front of the entire session one at a time and we clapped for them.  The person that got the most applause won.  An autistic kid named Brad participated and he was really into his dance, but it wasn’t anything special.  For the first time I can remember I felt the Spirit at a dance because Brad got more cheers and applause than any other person.  The joy and excitement shone on his face.  I’m grateful for the amazing youth that made an autistic boy’s day by cheering and clapping for him and making him the dance competition winner.  

9 June 2010, Wednesday
I forgot to mention two things from the dance last night.  First, during a slow dance I asked a short, timid-looking girl to dance.  I had been dancing a lot that night and I was sweating pretty profusely and during the slow dance a mixture of sweat and sunscreen got into my eye.  My eye, being a very wise eye, started watering like crazy and I had to keep wiping tears off of my face.  It was a little embarrassing. 
When I was working at the water table a group of four girls came up to the table and one of them announced that she hadn’t been asked to dance all night.  I told her that it was probably because she was too pretty and the guys were intimidated by her beauty.  Her friend then gave me a high five.  Later that night I found that girl and asked her to dance.

Some of my EFY kids waiting for
something exciting to happen.

17 June 2010, Thursday
During the variety show today a blind girl named Erin Nightingale played a song she wrote on the piano.  I was blown away by how beautiful it was.  At the end the crowd gave her a standing ovation that she couldn’t see, but that we all felt.  
Tonight was the musical fireside and I was really nervous because I know how uplifting it can be and I was worried that my kids wouldn’t prepare themselves for it.  They did a great job being reverent and really felt the Spirit.  Before the program I was talking with Hayley, the only person from our group in the program, and she was saying that very few people were in the choir.  I told her not to worry, that angels would sing with them.  And they did.  

This next entry was after EFY when I was teaching Spanish at BYU.  I think the reason this entry touched me so much is that it's nice when others tell you that everything will be okay, but it's better to hear it from from yourself (well, a younger version of yourself).

29 June 2010, Tuesday

Squaw Peak -- my favorite hike in Provo

I was feeling a little depressed today with my lot in life so I decided to hike Squaw Peak to clear my head.  The hike up was tough and it was hot, but I was pretty much the only person on the trail so I had a lot of time to think.  The first song I listened to on my iPod was “I Know Heavenly Father Loves Me.”  And I felt very grateful because I really do know that He loves me.  It’s easy to forget how blessed we are and I think I’ve been forgetting too much lately.  It was nice to take some time to think and realize that despite my circumstances everything will be okay.  I know that everything will work out.  

More than sappy things, I try to record the funny things that happen.  Here's something funny (well, I think it's funny) that I wrote that I had completely forgotten about until I read it a few days ago.

14 March 2011, Monday
Today was Pi day so we wrote Pi-kus for FHE.  The first line has 3 syllable, the next has one, and the last has four (3.14).  Here are my two Pi-kus:
Benjamin 
Is 
My first name, yo!

I don’t bake
But
Girls bake real good 

It was really great to reminisce and remember.  I really needed to read these entries and I'm glad that I wrote them.  Journals are way rad!

Labor Day Adventure

It's taller than me

On Labor Day 2011 I embarked on a 720 mile journey to begin were I had started. You can read about it here. This Labor Day I had another unexpected adventure.

Danielle and Amy invited me to go on a Labor Day hike with them to a place called Romero Pools north of Tucson. I brought my roommate Kevin along, but didn’t know the other nine people that went on the hike. Even though we left early in the morning it was incredibly hot. The hike was beautiful and I finally got the cliché picture that every non-Arizonan needs of hugging a cactus.  I've seen a lot of these pictures and typically the person "hugging" the cactus isn't even touching it.  I made sure to give my cactus a real hug.

Amy jumping in the water

There were a lot of people at the pools and we had a blast jumping from 20 foot ledges into the water and swimming around. While we were hanging out in one of the pools I stepped on something that felt unnaturally smooth. I pulled it out of the water and was surprised to see that it was a waterproof camera. The screen said, “Memory card full,” and the only thing on the camera was a 52 minute video. I played the video and it showed a guy yelling, “Anything is possible!” and then jumping 20 feet into the water with camera in hand which he promptly dropped on impact (that’s why it’s import to fasten the strap around your wrist). The camera kept recording and I could see the guy looking for the camera. He got really close a few times, but never found it. I asked a few people if it belonged to them, but no one claimed it. Not too much of a surprise considering it’d been at the bottom of a murky pool for more than an hour. I am now the owner of a Kodak underwater camera that I really have no use for.

You can barely see Donald and Charity in the back.
At this point we had no idea Donald was hurt.

The results of scouting (the stretcher, not the shirtless men)

After hanging out at the pools for about an hour we decided to head out. That’s when we noticed that Donald could barely walk. I have to admit that up to this point I’d never said a word to Donald or his girlfriend Charity. Apparently right we when arrived at the pools Donald accidently slipped down a rock and fell 10 feet. We didn’t know this at the time, but he had broken one ankle and sprained the other. Since we thought he had only twisted his ankle we decided to walk the three miles back to our cars (really didn't have any other choices). With much effort and with the help of the strong guys in the group (myself not included) Donald made it about a quarter of a mile. He couldn’t go any further and we realized we were in real trouble. The Eagle Scouts in the group (once again, myself not included) fashioned a stretcher for him out of the trunks of two century plants and our t-shirts. It was pretty ingenious. However, the narrow trail and extreme heat quickly convinced us that we weren’t going to make it back. We made it about 100 yards then camped out under a tree.

Charity called the park services and they said they were sending someone up who would be there in about an hour. We were expecting someone to come up with a real stretcher so we could carry Donald down the mountain. An hour and forty minutes later a sheriff (I think that’s who he said he was) showed up with a medic. The medic hung an IV bag from the tree were sitting under and gave Donald some morphine. And then he said that a helicopter would be coming soon to pick him up and take him to the hospital. Now, you’ve got to understand that it’s pretty hard to break the spirits of 13 Mormons and even though we were in the midst of a tragedy we had a pretty good time hanging out under that tree (except for Donald, of course, who was in excruciating pain). And when we saw a helicopter show up, circle around us, and then land on hill close to us you’d think it was Christmas morning.  It was pretty cool.

Christmas morning

They loaded Donald up on the chopper and whisked him off to safety.  The helicopter wasn't super-wide and we could see Donald's legs hanging out the door as they flew away.  As soon as Donald was gone Charity bolted off down the hill so she could meet him at the hospital. That left the 11 of us with nothing to whisk us away and we had some problems of our own. We had planned on a three hour hike and had now been gone for nearly seven hours. I thought I had been smart taking two liters of water, but my water and everyone else’s was gone. As we started to trek down the mountain we encountered volunteers with backpacks full of cold water and Gatorade who were there just to help us. I quickly downed a few bottles of water and felt very refreshed, but then more and more volunteers showed up offering us water. I started to politely decline the water only to be told, “Don’t make me carry this back down the mountain!” So I took the water with a grateful smile and just stuffed it in my backpack. I ended up drinking six or seven bottles and had four in my backpack. They brought A LOT of water.

"Let's pretend like we're friends." -Amy Flood

When we got to the trail head we saw a news truck, ambulances, and fire trucks, all for us. It was a bit overwhelming and a little unnecessary, but they just wanted to make sure we were all okay. They took everyone’s vitals and I had low blood pressure (97 over 70), but I felt fine. They told me to drink more water. Mostly, I was just hungry. I had expected to be home at noon at it was now 5pm and all I’d eaten that day was a bowl of cereal and a granola bar. I counted over 50 people including medics, parks service people, and volunteers who had helped us that day. I had not realized that we were such a big deal. There was even a story about us on the news.  Here's a link to the news story.  However, in classic news fashion the story had one glaring error.  The reporter said that Donald jumped into shallow water, but he had fallen not jumped and he didn't even land in water.  The story makes us seem like careless people when in reality we are carefree people.

Also, after four years of blogging I just learned how to add captions to my photos.  Yes, I'm that tech-savy.

The Five People You Will Meet in Arizona

(1) The negative Nellie at the grocery story

I’ve moved to new places multiple times and it’s always a little lonely at first, but then after a month or so it gets awesome. My third day in Tucson I was feeling rather stressed about not getting the job I had wanted and not having any furniture in me bedroom or food in my cupboards. I went grocery shopping which for some reason was making me feel even more stress (probably because grocery shopping leads to cooking which I don't really care for). As I was paying for my groceries the cashier, an annoyed looking older woman, asked me, “Why are you so happy?” The question caught me off guard because I was really stressed at that precise moment and did not think that I had a smile on my face, but I responded, “I just moved to Tucson! And I’m happy to be here.” She gave me a look that said, “Are you crazy, hun?” She then proceeded to tell me how hot it is, how her hometown of San Diego is better and her dumb husband never should have made her move to Tucson, but how I would love the weather in the winter. The lady in line behind me chimed in and told me that the winters really are beautiful and that I would love it here. The cashier complained a little bit more and I just smiled and nodded at this surprisingly chatty cashier. As I was leaving I thanked the cashier and she said in a slightly chipper tone, “Welcome to Tucson.” Yes, welcome indeed.

(2) The wise old man and (3) his wife

In an effort to make friends I’ve been going to almost every activity that I’ve been invited to; even things that I would usually say no to. One such activity was singing at a retirement home (I’ve actually said no to such outings on multiple occasions). After singing seven songs or so the lady in charge said, “Okay, go mingle!” and we were supposed to mingle with the old folks. I ended up talking to this nice old man and his wife who were originally from North Carolina. I asked him how long they’d been married and he said 69 years. I told him that I’d have to live to be nearly one hundred to be married for 69 years. He just laughed and told me that I was still very young. Then I asked, “So what’s your secret? How have you been married for so long?” After thinking for a moment he responded in a matter of fact voice, “Give in,” and then he laughed. I think that’s good advice. Most things aren’t worth fighting about.

(4) The Monopoly man

I was at a party for all the new students in my program on Saturday and one of my colleagues brought her “friend” from Atlantic City who I’m pretty sure is actually a little more than that. I asked him what he did for a living and he said he was a real estate agent. Anyone who is well informed and who knows me really well will understand why his occupation was thrilling to me. You see, I was obsessed with the game Monopoly as a teenager and the properties in the game are named after real places in Atlantic City. I tried not to sound too excited as I realized that I was talking to a real life Rich Uncle Pennybags. He told me that he had even sold some properties on the streets mentioned in Monopoly. I tried not to grin with delight at this information because I had just met this man and did not want to seem like a crazy monopoly fanatic so I contorted my face into an expression that said, “That’s cool, I guess.” I wanted to ask if the houses he sold were little, green, and made of plastic, but that might have been a little too charming. Unlike the cartoon Rich Uncle Pennybags the real one did not have a top hat or a mustache. Instead, his tattoos, hip clothing, and overly tanned skin made him look more like a 50 year old trying appear 25.

(5) That girl from the blog

When my cousin’s wife Angie found out I was moving to Arizona she told me that I should take out her friend who lives in Phoenix. Angie sent me a link to her friend’s blog so that I could stalk her and see what she was like. I clicked on the link and read some of a post, but didn’t read much because Phoenix and Tucson are two hours apart and that seemed like too long of a drive for a date.

Last night I just happened to be in Phoenix eating dinner at Café Rio with my friend Megan from BYU. As we were eating, Megan’s friend Erin unexpectedly showed up. They briefly chatted about something and then Megan said, “This is my friend Ben,” and Erin and I shook hands. Then Erin said, “I think we’ve blogged stalked each other.” At this moment I was confused, really confused because I had no idea who this woman was and did not know why she knew me. Sensing my bewilderment she said, “I’m Angie’s friend,” and then instead of feeling confused I felt embarrassed for never writing to this girl. As we chatted another guy walked up to our table and said, “Excuse me, did you go to BYU? You look so familiar.” This was too much, I wasn’t supposed to know anyone in this state and suddenly two random people recognize me at Café Rio! It turns out that that guy (whose name escapes me) was sitting at the same table as Erin. They had spotted me minutes before and had decided that it would be funny for him to say that he knew me too, even though he didn’t. But as we chatted we realized that we really did know each other from a Spanish class we’d taken together.

I was going to tell another story about a Turkish man I met who told me that ben in Turkish means mole by pointing out a mole on a shy girl’s face, but this post is already long. Apparently he nearly laughed when I said, "Hi, I'm Ben." So come to Arizona, there are lots of interesting people to meet here.

I Have A Cactus for A Neighbor

I made it to Arizona! My drive from Provo to Tucson was rather uneventful, but fun. I didn’t realize how little there is between those two cities. As I was driving through Sulphurdale, Utah I decided to call my friend Allison (not because she smells like sulfur). She didn’t answer, but called me back a short time later. I was driving through a mountainous area and she kept cutting in and out so I told her I’d call her back in few minutes when I had better service. I then lost service completely and when I get service again it said I was roaming. I didn’t get real service until I reached Flagstaff, AZ about five hours later. So when I said, “I’ll call you back in a few minutes,” I really meant “hours.”

When I crossed the border into Arizona I saw the scenery I had expect: rocks, sand, desert vegetation. Like this:

After driving for a while I went up this winding hill and when I got to the top I was surrounded by grass and trees. Apparently there’s a forest in northern Arizona. Who knew? I didn’t.

I got to my new house around 9:30 on Saturday night and met my new roommates. They're both cool and Mexican (those are usually synonymous to me). I had seen pictures of my house before I got there and it looked really, really small. And honestly, it is small, but much larger than it looked in the pictures. I really like it. I haven't gotten any furniture for my bedroom yet so it's just a mess of boxes and my super-comfortable cot.

Tucson looks nothing like Washington, but I'm already liking it. And the coolest part is that I live across the street from a cactus. Here's the view from my front porch:

Based on advice from friends, I will not try to become friends with the cactus by hugging her (obviously she's a girl).