My daughter and I were reminiscing about her high school days. The high school she attended is in a small town in the northwest with a large population of mormons (we used to call it BYU-Prep). She reminded me of the time she gave a "tacky party". We thought of tacky things to serve (ritz crackers in the box with a can of cheeze whiz next to it, spam on toothpicks, etc.) The kids came dressed in tacky clothes with a tacky prize for the funniest. (One gal came with toilet paper sticking out of her skirt). When we were looking for tacky decorations we went to second- hand stores for faded plastic flowers, ugly hand crafted nick-nacks...we hit pay dirt when we found the Deseret store! You get the idea...Anyway it was a lot of fun and one of the things we remember most is that her mormon friends didn't get it! They had a complete failure to grasp the concept. Thought it was an okay party but couldn't understand what the whole "tacky" thing was about. Go figure.

During Halloween one year a coworker came dressed as a BYU coed - Laura Ashley dress, teased hair, WAY too much makeup. She got it spot on! We thought she looked hilarious. What was even better was the mormon women who didn't get the joke and kept telling her all day how nice she looked.

When I worked on the BYU newspaper, The Daily Universe, we were going to do a story about Halloween party ideas but we had to cut the part about the Tacky Parties because too many of the Morridor students on staff were either insulted or were worried about offending. Those of us from out of state didn't even understand why they were bugged.

That sounds like a really fun party. It would be cool to think of all the "tacky" decorations and clothes to wear.I will remember that when relatives as about parties.

and the theme was white trash weekend.

damn, it's hard these days to find a six-pack of Tab.

My boyfriend got a white trash Christmas present from a coworker a couple of years ago - a mullet wig and a six pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Gotta try that, but for adults. Boone's farm wine, two buck chuck, that kinda thing. Haha could be a fun way to start the Summer. We live in a kind of uppity community.

I went to a ward trunk-or-treat with frizzy hair and a pencilled on mustache.

I told people that I was Mr Kotter, when in reality, I went as Ron Jeremy.

that one left me in tears.

Mormons don't understand the concept of "tacky" the same way that fish don't understand the concept of "wet."