This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Years ago, I was asked to serve as a volunteer at an LDS family history center in Utah County. Every Tuesday night it was my job to help people search for their ancestors and prepare the names for submission to the temple.

As you might expect, I had a lot of free time on my hands. Most amateur genealogists already knew what they were doing and didn't really need any assistance, especially from the likes of me.

That was my downfall. I got bored. Looking up the horrible people from history — Hitler, Caligula, Genghis Khan, Stalin — to see if they were now Mormon (albeit still dead) only took about a month. I had to find something else to keep my interest up.

When I was actually asked for help getting names "temple ready," I sometimes reminded the people that since this was work for the dead, it was extremely important that the submitted names were from people who had definitely passed over.

Patron: "No, they're all dead. I'm sure of it."

Me: "That's good, because it costs more if we have to kill them for you."

Keep a straight face, and the looks were sometimes priceless. Even more fun was trying to guess who would laugh and who would be aghast. It was about even.

That's the trouble with lampooning human behavior. Even people who share the same sacred cow don't necessarily have the same sense of humor about it.

An individual's sense of humor is directly tied to their particular psyche. If you're borderline mental like me, things get out of hand rather quickly. If your personality is such that you're routinely mistaken for Lurch on "The Addams Family," it can make things intolerable for others.

My worst offense occurred one night when I posted, along with all the official church directives, the following notice on the library's bulletin board: "Attention, Library Patrons. Beginning in the year 2001, the LDS Church will no longer perform temple work for the French."

Because the librarian was on vacation, the notice stayed up for several days. The other volunteers began stressing about it. Hey, if it was on the bulletin board, it had to be true. Right?

"Oh, dear. First the Jews and now the French. What's the world coming to?"

"The Second Coming can't be far away. That's what I think."

When the librarian came back, she tore my "directive" down and let everyone know that it wasn't a general authority who put it up there.

Most of the other volunteers were chagrined. A couple even laughed. But one older volunteer decided that I had crossed the line.

He sought me out and sternly lectured me on what he considered sacrilege. I agreed that it might have been a little light-minded, but that it was also still a little bit funny.

Him: "Well, I don't think so."

Me: "Yeah, I know. That's the funny part."

Of course, not everyone who worships will see it this way. That's OK. It's how people like me — and there are more of us than you might imagine — cope when surrounded by people who think making fun of them is the same thing as making fun of God.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.