Nephi is afflicted with the wandering disorder and goes off into the wilderness again, taking many others with him—Laman sets himself up as the big kahoona.
AND it came to pass that one morning as I awoke from my sleep, having been out fishing late, and it being about the ninth hour (now we did number the morning hours from one to ten, beginning at midnight, and the evening from one to ten, beginning at midday, and this we did to please Sam, who concocted this time-keeping method, being partial to the metric system), and behold, one of my children, little Agonia, did ask me where all of the people had gone.
2 Now, I did peer out of my bungalow, and, 10 and behold, many of the horses and much of the cattle and all of the tents were gone; yea, half of the tribe had skipped off and were A.W.O.L.
3 And behold, I did rush over to roust out my brother Lemuel, and we did hustle over to the boat and found it safe and sound; wherefore, we did search the compound and did find nothing of Nephi and his family, nor of Sam and his family, nor of Zoram and his family, neither my sisters and their families, for they had all packed up, lock, stock, and brass plates, and gone off into the wilderness; yea, and our mother was gone, too.
4 Now I, Laman, did see that once a person has been led into the wilderness by the Lord, it is almost impossible to get the wanderlust out of his system; [59] yea, when the Lord finds somebody who is restless and can't settle down and actually likes the open road, He must be in seventh heaven.
5 And it came to pass that my first reaction was to say: Good riddance to bad rubbish, but then we did decide to take an inventory, that we might see what the deserters had pinched from us; and behold, they had left us half of the seed and half of the cattle and also a few horses and sheep that Lemuel had caught and tamed, plus a bunch of rusty tools that I had borrowed from Nephi and left out in the rain.
6 And behold, the brass plates were finally gone, and I was happy to be rid of them, for they had caused us constant grief from day one, and I was fed up to here with genealogy; yea, I was sick and tired of hearing all of those old prophesies and of trying to figure out the words of Isaiah when I didn't even have a secret decoder ring.
7 And Nephi did also carry off the ball or director, which I was sorry to lose because Morona thought it would look nice on the mantel, if I ever got around to building one; but behold, since I could not operate the darn thing anyway, we did console ourselves by thinking that it would have been just one more thing to dust.
8 But what did chap me was that they had purloined the sword of Laban, and I did want that sword in the worst way, for in the nice little weapons collection I had started, that would have been the trophy piece; yea, I was convinced that it was worth a bundle!
9 And it came to pass that we did give a name unto this mad urge to go off into the wilderness; yea, we did call it the wandering disorder, and Lemuel did insist that it was an hereditary problem, for my father was a descendant of Abraham, who wandered to all sorts of exotic places, with names like Dr of Chaldees and Gotham and Samorra; and behold, Joseph of old was also in our direct line; yea, he was so sorely afflicted that he got himself sold to some wandering Jaredites, I believe it was, just so he might slip on down and take a gander at Egypt; yea, and I think that Moses was also our relative, although I do not have the brass plates any more to check this out, but he had a very bad case of the wandering disorder, for he gad about in the wilderness for about 400 years, as I recall.
10 Now it was clear that my father, Lehi, did inherit a healthy dose of the genes that caused this wandering disorder, for although he did not wander the longest, he did set the record for distance, and he did get extra credit for wandering in a mixed media, both sand and water.
11 Now behold, Nephi did become the heir presumptive to this disease; wherefore, it was no great shock to see him creep off again, taking a whole passel of people with him, for almost everybody who gets sick and lights out into some wilderness or other prefers to have a lot of company to share in the misery; yea, as Lemuel did say: Nobody likes to wade thru afflictions [60] alone.
12 And it came to pass that I, Laman, did puzzle over their sudden departure, for it was just a few weeks before Christmas, and I did think that everyone was like me and hated to travel on holidays; but behold, Lemuel did scold me, saying that I had tied up Nephi one time too many.
13 And it came to pass that I did feel hurt that Nephi and Sam and little Jacob and Joseph and old Zoram and all their families had wandered off into the wilderness because of me; for behold, I did always believe that our little differences were only conventional sibling rivalry; yea, I did think of my murmuring and complaining and tying Nephi up as a normal response of an older brother who was repeatedly challenged by an over-achieving younger brother.
14 Now behold, I could not believe that Nephi would take our mother and all of the others with him, or that he would abandon the promised land; but Lemuel did remark that maybe the promised land was a bigger piece of real estate than we had thought; yea, it might include property on both sides of the narrow neck of land.
15 And it came to pass that I, Laman, did take the bull by the horns; wherefore, I did call the residue of the people together, and they consisted of my family and the family of Lemuel and the families of the sons of Ishmael and the family of the exchange student; yea, I did think it was high time for a powwow with the remaining homesteaders in this center stake of Zion.
16 Now behold, I did speak unto them on this wise, saying that following the death of my father, Lehi, behold, it had fallen upon me, the eldest son, to be the head honcho, and I knew that none of them wanted such a big responsibility, for it was lonely at the top, but somebody had to do it; yea, Nephi did try to muscle in on the job, for he had always wanted to be first fiddle, and I might have let him try his hand at it once he was properly trained, but now he had wandered away and was out of the running.
17 And I did explain unto them that if I did all of the work of ruling over them and did bear all of the heavy burdens as their boss, behold, they should promise to be my people and I would agree to be their king; yea, they must do all of the things that I did tell them to do; and behold, if they did not like it, they could lump it, for this was no democracy, neither would there be one in the promised land until long after the pilgrims.
18 And I did suggest unto them that they should henceforth be called Lamanoids, after me; but behold, Lemuel did think it would be better and more grammatical to call us the people of Laman or Lamanites; wherefore, I did agree, and we were thereafter called Lamanites.
19 Now, I did more than once hear some of the children of my brother refer to themselves as Lemuelites, and the children of the sons of Ishmael as Ishmaelites; but behold, I did remind them that the name, [61] Ishmaelites, was already spoken for by Abraham's posterity through his concubine, Hagar, and that they would know this if they had studied their genealogy; wherefore, they did remind me that we no longer had the brass plates and had become genealogically challenged.
20 But behold, the family of the exchange student did not complain, for their name was one of those funny ones with lots of consonants and no vowels and nobody could pronounce it anyway; wherefore, nothing was even named after them, so they were happy to be called Lamanites and did give me no grief.
