You did this to me

Well high school, congrats, you royally sucked
you were a lot of late nights
a lot of time spent in a plastic chair
a lot of stress over a dumb letter that decides how well I learned stuff
a lot of time spent writing and reading things that don't really matter much
you also were a lot of fun
you gave me a lot of great people
you showed me how to be social
how to use the quadratic equation
you gave me friday nights at the football stadium
you gave me my very best friends, and I thank you for that
unfortunately you also turned me into into something I'm not.
Something I was never meant to be,
something I wish I never became
you made me care too much about where I sat at lunch,
you made me care too much about what I did on the weekends,
about who I was friends with,
about who I wasn't friends with,
about what I wore,
about who I liked, and who I didn't
You made me care too much about becoming something everyone else would like.
Becoming something that I know I can be so much more than.
You made me base way too much of my self esteem on followers, likes, comments, and fake friends,
and for that I say, cuss you.
you gave a little and took a lot,
but you are insignificant now,
and I get to live the rest of my life without you now,
so thanks for everything, you taught me a lot
I hope I never see you again.
And I'm not exactly sure what happens next, but the world is ours now,
It's what we make of it.
Deuces.

Remember when

I remember when my parents told me we were moving, my dad was wearing his red sweats with no shirt on his swivel chair. I had never cried so hard.

I remember taking 95 hamburgers to homeless people and the genuine smiles they gave. I remember the disappointment in the hundreds of others that didn't get any.

I remember the best summer of my life. Only because of how carefree it was, we didn't actually do anything that great even.

I remember the long summer days in Texas, my best friend was my mom and we hung out every friday night together.

I remember going to Ridley's every friday night 8th grade to get all the doughnuts we could fit in a box and playing video games the rest of the night. Far before girls mattered.

I remember spending every weekend with my old best friend. I remember the marie callenders chicken pot pies that took 44 minutes to cook at 425 and burned my tongue every time.

I remember the hispanic guy that tried to kidnap me in the harts parking lot. I remember hearing them trying to keep some other less fortunate kid in the car when one guy got out. I'm lucky.

I remember waking up with all my little brothers jumping on me every christmas morning. We always sleep in my room.

I remember when my uncle Jake died. To this day I have never cried harder than the day I found out. It was a cold morning, February 23, 2010

I remember my first sneak out. The adrenaline was pumping through every vein in my body, it was a cold night in december.

I remember my last sneak out. My mom was there standing in the snow waiting for me. That was arguably the worst feeling in the world.

I remember thinking that I would never make it to graduation; yet here I am, just begging time to slow down so I can savor the last time I have here, and I know it sounds crazy, but yes, I will miss high school.

Addition

Addition
one of the first things we learn to do in school
arguably one of the most important
but I don't mean math
I'm talking about adding to the greater good,
the school,
the community,
peoples lives,
society as a whole.
Addition when used correctly can change lives for the better.
Unfortunately one of the first things we also learn is subtraction,
take what you can from this,
take your time
take that smile off your face this is serious,
we take things for granted
take my heart and do what you will with it

sadly most of us become to focused on subtraction rather than addition,
when we have all been taught that true happiness comes from addition,
and few of us seem to learn,
but for the few that do, they know how marvelous addition can be
so in life try to do a little more addition than subtraction next time.
You never know what could happen.
Heck, you might even end up changing someone life,
just try and make it for the better.

mushy gushy follow your heart

This might be mushy and maybe even a little bit gushy, but that's just how hearts go, so I'm sorry.
Our hearts speak to us and tell us to do things that will make us happy
they tell us to follow them and not the brain,
they say the brain never did anything but math and visual processing
that nothing good ever came from being complacent
so what do we do?
we take its hand and follow it into the unknown
hoping for the best but expecting the worst.
I recently followed my heart
it told me to kiss my best friends younger sister
it told me it would make me happy,
and it did
I'm arguably the happiest I've ever been,
scratch that,
I am
and I know that I could never gotten here following my brain
and I have absolutely no clue what comes next,
but that's half the fun
I guess that's just how following your heart goes now doesn't it

That one girls pool

So there was this one time when my friends and I all went to this on chicks house on a friday night there were about 7 or 8 of us guys that showed up at this house. The thing is, the house wasn't just an average house, it was really nice, like it has an indoor basketball court and an indoor rock climbing wall and a bunch of other stuff. So we get there and everyone is doing is doing lame stuff, so we take it into our own hands to show ourselves around this nice home we have just been welcomed into. So all 8 of us start going room to room poking our heads in and looking around. After about 4 or 5 rooms we open up a door and walk into their exercise room that has an indoor pool in it. Everyone starts losing their mind and gets into this room as fast as we can and we lock the door behind us. I ran over to the crank for the pool cover and removed it meanwhile everyone else hadn't planned on swimming so everyone stripped down to their underwear and started to get in. I was the only one who didn't because I was the guy in charge of lookout, I was also the only guy who seemed to realize that there may be some type of repercussions to the whole thing, so I was fine with being the lookout guy. I hung out on the outside of the room for a while faithfully fulfilling my duty when they began to sing "I need the every hour" from the pool, so I went back inside for a minute to see what was going on. No more than a minute later do we hear a banging on the door and lots of yelling from the other side. Next thing you know, the door unlocks and swings open and 7 wet, cold, scantily clothed young men, grabbed all of their clothes and ran for the door as fast as they could. It was absolute mayhem, wet bodies slipping and falling into things as they tried to take the corners too fast. Almost all of the girls started screaming and one of them broke down crying. All 8 of us sprinting out the backdoor, 7 of us in nothing but underwear, tromping through the snow to get to the car. I was the driver and the last guy barely made it into the car before we peeled out. As we were about a half mile down the road one of the guys yells "wait, I left one of my shoes in there" he had left his right shoe back at the pool, and these weren't just any shoes, these were the Kobe 10's, arguably worth more than the car we were in. That being the case we had no choice but to go back to the scene of the crime and rescue what we had lost. We pulled up to the house and you could hear the wails of a crying girl from outside the house. The girl who owned the house was waist deep in the pool in tears trying to "fix" the pool but only making it much worse. As we walked inside it was somber as a funeral, not a soul in there was saying a word for fear for being banned from the house for eternity. We solemnly filed into the pool room and she really let us know how she felt, punching and hitting some of us. Yelling the whole time. There was nothing to do but get the shoe and leave, nothing we could say or do would console her. So that is what we did. And I've tried to avoid her ever since.

What happens in vegas, stays in vegas

Thank you

A word to my (future) children

To whom it may concern,

I hope that I can be the best dad you could ever dream of.

I hope I can be there when you win your first soccer game.

I hope I can be there when you lose your first tooth.

I hope that when you score your first goal you tell me all about it, and that you won't stop talking about it for the next month.

I hope that the anxiety from losing a tooth won't stop you from letting me pull it out,

that I can be there when you win an award at the science fair, even if it's just for participating,

that I can be there when you lose your first soccer game, I've been there, I know how it feels.

I hope that when I come home from work I hear your feet running from wherever you are to come give me a big hug.

I hope that you get mad at me when I tell you to finish your dinner so you can get big and strong, so that you can become what I never could.

I want to be in the passenger seat when you drive around the church parking lot for the first time.

I hope that I never have to take work home so that I can hang out with you, instead of the computer.

I hope you tell me when I'm embarrassing you, so I can continue doing whatever I'm doing.

I hope you get into trouble while you still can, adulthood won't be much fun.

I hope you tell me when you've won your first love,

I hope you tell me when you've lost your first love too.

I hope that when you talk about me to your friends it's only about how "awesome" I am,

even though I'm sure it won't always be that way,

because after all, I'll know what's best for you won't I?

On second thought I probably won't even know what's best for me,

so please just bear with me,

I'll probably still be trying to find myself.

But I won't let that stop me from being the "bestest dad" I've always hoped I could be.