Looking back 10 years....

Ever since my 10 year reunion last year, I occasionally look back at what I was doing 10 years ago.   To be honest, I'm sure I started looking 10 years back before then, but now it has passed, "Oh, I was in school at Aledo" or variations on that theme.  10 years ago was the first of those gloriously long college summers when school ends in the first week of May and doesn't start again until the end of August.

I'm sure I'll continue to do this, I can think of 1 day in April and 2 days in May specifically next year when I will be looking back 10 years, but today, if you'll stay with me, I'd like to share about that Summer.

Now, with the midwives putting us on baby watch and the due date fast approaching for Our Baby Olive to come into this world, I sit and think back and wonder did I see this coming 10 years ago?  It's fitting that Olive comes this year of all years.  Summer of 2001, I see as the last summer I ever had the blissful happiness of youthful innocence.  Now, 10 years later, I (we) have created a new life and get to see the world through her eyes.  By the time Summer of 2002 rolled around, I had moved out of my Dad's house for good and my closest friend was dead, but this Summer, this first long and last innocent Summer was glorious.

I started dating a girl who would change my life.  She taught me many lessons about how to be a decent person and how to survive in a relationship.  We've both since moved on and found people who are much better for us. It's not that we were bad people, or bad to each other (on purpose) but we were an oval peg and a round hole. The right general shape and very close, but in the end we just didn't fit right.  I took a lot from that relationship.  I learned that in order to be truly happy you can't pretend to change the things that you don't want to change.  I went into that relationship looking for it to be "The One" and that was wrong of me.  Anybody I have dated since, I've looked to see if the pieces fit, not tried to reshape myself to fit the pieces that don't.  I have found my Love and my Life.  My wife and I fit, I guess you could say she's my oval.  It was a long, long journey to get to where I could recognize all of this and that journey started just about 10 years ago.

Like I said that Summer was also the last Summer I lived in Aledo.  It was the last time my closest friend lived 3 doors down and I could just pop in without having to call or plan in advance.  If I had known then that this was the last 3 months that we'd be able to hang out every day for days on end, I would have done it more, but that's the thing about going through life, you can't see what's coming.  Still, we had good times those 3 months.  Before I discount everyone else that was around, I do need to say that was the last time that HS group of ours hung out on a regular basis.  I think, looking back, Randy was a lynch pin in our group.  In a weird way he held us all together.  Now, don't get me wrong we're all still friends and some of us still see each other on occasion but we did seem to splinter off into separate groups after that.  I'm sure it's no coincidence that it also coincided with us going to different schools and moving to different parts of Texas, but at the same time we had less reason to come back.  I miss those guys and girls, a lot.

Let's get back to the happier side of all of that.  It was a great summer, I was researching going to UTA.  I visited my girlfriend a lot in Denton in that heavenly 1 bedroom efficiency apartment.  I'm pretty sure that was the Summer with the month old glass cup of Lucky Charms and Milk that yours truly cleaned out of that apartment.  That still may be the single most disgusting thing I have ever cleaned.  It started as a full cup and by the time it was cleaned it had condensed down to half cup.  The smell, as I found out was sealed in by the top layer.  As soon as I dug a spoon in to slop it into the garbage disposal the smell almost knocked me down and my food out.  It was an unimaginable horror and no it was not my mess but 500 sq ft gets cramped real quick and I just wanted to help clean.

That summer was also pretty good for movies.  The Mummy Returns, Jurassic Park III (yah i enjoyed it), Rush Hour 2,  A Knight's Tale, Shrek, Pearl Harbor (ok didn't like that but it was a big movie), Evolution, The Fast and the Furious, A.I.,  Final Fantasy, Legally Blonde, America's Sweethearts (still love this movie),  Planet of the Apes (enjoyable),  Moulin Rouge (which I didn't see 'til it came out on video but that's a 10 year old fight not worth getting into).  Funny enough i went to the theater to see all of these, except one.  I was a movie going junkie that Summer and it was grand.

I'm sure nobody cares about any of this as it's only my trip down memory lane, but it was a good trip.  I'm looking forward to this Summer and meeting our child.  I'm looking forward to the next 10 years and what they will bring but most of all, I'm enjoying now because what's the point of always looking somewhere else if you miss everything that's going on around you.  Hell, this time last year I wasn't yet married, we had just settled on a date and we were scurrying to get everything together for our trip to Vegas.  A lot can change in 12 months but sometimes it's nice to look and see how far you've come in the past 120.

Peace,