Kerry Soper—Humor Columns

Utah Wedding Receptions (and How to Avoid Getting Invited to Them...) By Kerry Soper (Published in  Utah Life  Magazine, March 2018) After hitting the five year mark in our current Utah neighborhood, something disturbing started happening: invitation after invitation to wedding receptions from random neighbors started showing up in our mailbox.  Each time I approached the fridge there was a new, dippy-looking young couple on a piece of fancy card stock staring back at me (usually with an air of self-satisfied naiveté while engaged in some awkward display of public affection).   Beyond feeling irritated about how this development would diminish our bank account (and enrich the makers of $15 kitchen implements), I realized, in despair, that my wife would insist that we had to attend all of these tedious events.    As an anti-social, middle-aged curmudgeon, I had come to the conviction that the best way to spend a Friday night with my wife was eating take-out ...

Artfully Missing out on Utah's Economic Boom (or My Worst Job Ever)  By Kerry Soper (Published in  Utah Life  Magazine, January 2022) I’m a little tired of business magazines continually praising Utah’s prolonged economic boom: soaring real estate prices, a surplus of high-paying tech industry jobs, and a responsible and well-educated workforce.  What about the artsy goof offs like me who are left out of equation?  Bad at math, naïve about all things financial, and ill-equipped to hold down a traditional 9 to 5 corporate job, I’m still living in the “starter” home that we bought back in 1999.   Thanks to academia I’ve found a safe haven for my brand of competent mediocrity, but for much of my early adult life I floundered to find a decent job and lucrative career path in this thriving state.  I quietly failed, in fact, at a number of lame jobs: trench digger for a sprinkler company; midnight custodian at greasy chain restaurants; and fry cook at Steven...

Utah's Strange High School Mascots  By Kerry Soper (Published in  Utah Life  Magazine, September 2022) Maybe you’ve noticed that we have a widespread problem with strange and outdated high school mascots in our state?  There’s the Davis “Dart” (looking like a cross between a deranged bumble bee and a floppy hypodermic needle); the Jordan “Beetdigger,” (a sad guy in overalls); the American Fork “Caveman,” (straight out of Saturday morning cartoons from the 1970s); “The Don” of Spanish Fork (a fancy guy from Spain?); and the Springville “Red Devil” (one of Satan’s spawn who just really wants this particular football team from Utah Valley make it to state this year).  And what about “The Friendly Fighting Scot” of Ben Lomond High? (I guess he’s the worst kind of fighting Scot?  So passive aggressive?)    In the hopes of solving this problem, I’ve been brainstorming some alternatives that might help our state’s high schools catch up to the twent...

Fly-Fishing in Utah By Kerry Soper (Published in  Utah Life  Magazine, July 2021) Soaking wet, on a sandbar in the middle of the Provo River last November, I had a midlife crisis. “Why the heck,” I asked myself, “did I decide to get into fly-fishing?”  I saw warning signs that I wouldn’t excel at this complicated Utah sport (that can be challenging for uncoordinated beta males like me), when I first interacted with a 30-something sales guy back in 1999. Wearing a baseball cap and soul patch, he gave barking advice like a football coach, rattling off advice with an opaque, insider’s lingo – “You’ll need a nymphing rig with a 4-weighted, 10-foot, 3-piece beryllium rod and a quadruple-X, 12-foot tapering leader followed by 5X monogamous tippet …”   It stung, too, that he didn’t even give a courtesy chuckle to my mumbled jokes about the vaguely inappropriate names of some of the artificial flies on display: “I’m not sure my wife would be happy about me buying thes...

Lake Powell Houseboat Vacations By Kerry Soper (Published in  Utah Life  Magazine, September 2021) I’ve always envied those Utahns who can afford yearly trips to Lake Powell for a week on a giant houseboat. It seems like the ultimate vacation: red rock country, water sports, basking in the sun, and camping in comfortable style.  My brother in law felt the same way for years, dreaming about doing that kind of trip with his family someday. Here’s his story—in his own words—of how he temporarily achieved that goal... sort of. “Several years ago, my wife and I and our fours kids moved back to Utah after living for a long time in Texas. Out of the blue one day we were invited by some friends to spend a week on one of those fancy houseboats at Lake Powell.  In high school, growing up in Utah, I had heard about these kinds of trips from some of my friends, but had never experienced one first-hand. In my adult life it didn’t happen either because my wife and tended to ...