Twenty Seven Is A Good Number, Right?

1. I love Japanese cinema.  I haven't seen nearly as much as I would like, but Akira Kurosawa is one of my top five all time favorite directors.
2. When I go on long drives, I listen to podcasts.  Usually Garrison Keilor giving the news from Lake Wobegone, or more recently, You Look Nice Today.
3. The main reason I like Huey Lewis and the News, John Cougar Mellencamp, Chicago, and The Doobie Brothers today is because that's what my dad always had playing in the car when I was younger.
4. People talk to me about my height at least once a day.
5. I was suspended twice.  Once in third grade for lighting fireworks on the playground with my friend Billy.  I told the truth and didn't get in trouble.  The second time was Sophomore year of high school.  I threw a drumstick at another student during percussion ensemble class.  My teacher called it hazing.  The same day, I was elected Student Body Secretary/Treasurer.  I was also supposed to play the drums in the dress rehearsal for the school musical "Blood Brothers" that night, but wasn't allowed.  I wasn't the first person to miss a performance though.  The lead actress in the same musical was suspended the day before when she was caught "with" a boy in the choir room loft. An alumni drama student learned the lines in one day and took her part.
6. The only bone I've broken in my body is my left ring finger, which I broke playing basketball.  I have dislocated my right shoulder three times though.  The first time cliff jumping in Estacada, the second snowboarding on Mt. Hood, and the third throwing a dodgeball while at a summer camp in Montana.
7. I've only attended 4 schools my entire life.  King elementary school, Gardiner Middle School, and Oregon City High School, all in Oregon City, and NNU.
8. The first movie I saw in the theater was The Passion of the Christ. I was 18.
9. The earliest memory I can recall took place when I was 2 years and 3 months old. I was sitting in the parking lot of Spicer Brothers Produce right before it opened on April 20, 1988, watching my aunt cindy paint the side of the building.
10. When I was young, my favorite song was Waterfalls by TLC. When I was even younger, I loved Walking In Memphis by Bruce Springsteen. When it came on the radio in the house, I would run over and sit on the floor 2 feet away, listening to the whole song. Once I hadn’t finished changing my pants when my brother yelled across the house to tell me that the song was on the radio again. With my pants half on, I ran, tripped over my pants and fell down on the ground in front of the radio, where I stayed until the song had finished.
11. I flew to Oakland by myself when people were still allowed to greet you at the gate. My grandparents were waiting there. My grandpa took me to a Golden State Warriors game, just like I asked him to in a letter I wrote him a week earlier. My grandma took me to her sisters house, and I held my breath through a tunnel that was a mile long. Later, we saw the sea lions at Pier 39.  It's one of my favorite memories of my grandfather, who died 6 and a half years ago.
12. My grandma helped my hunger for books.  She's to blame for getting me started on Harry Potter.
13. Once, my dad took me to breakfast at a local diner at 6 in the morning before elementary school. That was the first time I had a pancake that was the size of a plate.
14. The first true guilt I felt was when I lied to my mom when I was in the third grade. I had rode my bike to the large forested ditch that was behind my neighbor’s house. They were making flamethrowers with aerosol cans and lighters. They wanted me to come down to the bottom, but I knew what they were doing was dangerous, and the hill was steep. I went part of the way and I decided to leave, but I fell in the mud climbing back up the steep hill. I got on my back and rode home as fast as I could. When I got home, my mom came to the door and saw me covered in dirt. I started to cry and told her that I had fallen off of my bike. I have never told her the truth.
15. Many people may not like to be called while they are sleeping.  I actually have my phone just a foot from my head at night in hopes that someone might call to see what I'm doing. This has nothing to do with desperation to hang out with people, I just know that if I get a phone call at three in the morning, it's not going to be boring.  And I will gladly get up and go to Sharis for a cup of coffee.
16. Some of my life goals are: To play a concert at Madison Square Garden, to kiss a girl on the eiffel tower, to see an NHL game in every home arena, to have coffee with a famous author, to be in a band/go into business with my brother, to create a masterpiece, to visit my second cousin in New Zealand, to go on a backpacking trip with my brother, dad, and grandpa, to take my grandson on a backpacking trip when I'm a grandfather, to buy a nice suit, like a nice suit, and to own an NBA team, or at least be a season ticket holder to the Blazers.
17. My favorite writing utensil is the Uni Ball Jetstream.
18. I think the worst food I have ever eaten was when I had duck pate in Montpellier, France.
19. It blows my mind that other people have rational thought.  Since I only know my own thoughts, it's entirely too difficult for me to grasp the idea that everyone else is confusing themselves just as much as I am.
20. I laugh out loud and sometimes cry when I'm reading.  I cried in Sometimes a Great Notion, because that book is abso-infix-lutely brilliant.
21. I went to Sundance twice with other film students when I was in college, and I could have cared less about the movies.  I just wanted to see celebrities.
22. My dad used to give my brother and I haircuts until I cried when I looked in the mirror.  He never did it again after that.
23. I like coffee.  Starbucks is my favorite.  My drink of choice in the summer is a tall espresso frappucino with a shot poured on top and extra caramel sauce.  My drink in the winter is a Double tall 1/2 flavor cinnamon white mocha.  I think this makes me a snob.
24. My parents always had date night on Fridays.  And every Friday, my brother and I would watch a rented movie and eat either boboli pizza or macaroni and cheese.  The movie I remember the most was Carpool with Tom Arnold.
25. I often misrepresent myself, and I'm sure other people do as well.  That's why I try to approach new relationships expecting the best instead of the worst.
26. I am addicted to online shopping.  At any given time, I am more than likely wearing something I purchased online.
27. I listened to Christian music solely until I went to a Christian college. Now I hardly listen to Christian music.

Before I Go To Bed (Version 2)

I've been pretty skeptical of this whole coming back home and working for my dad business.  I was against it for a long time, because I wanted proof that I went to college.  After spending four years in Idaho, now where am I?  In the same town, same house, working the same job, with some of the same people.  Not much has changed.  I've been taking steps to make these changes though.

This summer, my old bedroom will be turned into another guest room.  I don't even sleep in it now; the bed in my brother's old room is more comfortable than mine.  Anyways, I've been sorting out and getting rid of most of the junk that has sat waiting for me in my room for four years.  My mom has bought a new bedspread, and once we paint over the two-tone blue paint job that I chose five years ago, there won't be much left to remind me of my old self.  And that's the way I like it.  I need proof.

Not the kind of proof that everyone older than me keeps thrusting upon me.  Just because I'm out of college now doesn't mean that I have to get a job.  For me, it almost means the opposite.  I need some time.  Sure a job would be nice, but I just need time, you know?  I can work for the rest of my life until I've work myself tired, but why start now?

Who I Used To Be

And so the day comes to a close.  Another ring cut off of the chain.  Soon enough I'll reach another milestone.

When I was in 3rd grade, someone told me that I would graduate from high school in 2004.  At that young age, I couldn't even grasp the actual meaning of a length of time that long.  At that age, that would have meant that I would be in school for about as long as I had already been alive.  then someone told me that 2008 would be the year that I would graduate from college, and I just didn't even try to contemplate that remark.  In my mind, I saw flying cars and jetpacks in 2008.

Well, it's 2008.  Everyone constantly talks about moving on, being a part of the real world, as if everything we have known and experienced up to this point amounts to nothing.  I'd like to think that I've done something worthwhile with my life in the past 22 years.  However, I can even become a follower in this thinking sometimes.

Over the past four years at college I have made and achieved a lot of goals.  Those include learning, earning a degree, making great friends, etc.  Another goal that I made was to forget about everything about my life before college, except for my family.  This goal came out of a tough last year of high school.  Well, if I'm being honest with myself, high school wasn't so kind to me, as it isn't to most people.  The fault may lie in the fact that I had too much hope.  Let me explain.

I never had solid friendships throughout high school.  I knew many people, and many people knew me, but I only had a couple friends that I would hang out with outside school.  This was never much of a problem for me though, because I had a strong group of "best friends" in my youth group.  The end of junior year and all of senior year proved to show me that having hope (or an unhealthy amount of hope) in people can paint an unrealistic picture of the way life is.  When friends moved on to other friends, or churches, or moved on to drugs, my hopes in their perfection and ultimate loyalty to me as a friend were dashed.  Lucky for me, I kept hope.  Even in the midst of changes for the worst in many of my relationships, I was able to smile and keep up my reputation as a silly guy, always smiling and laughing.

Since this happened at the end of senior year, I fooled myself into thinking that it would be the perfect time to move on and start life over again.  Good and bad things have resulted from looking at my move to Nampa in this way.  It's been good that I have been able to find meaning and importance in everything, and to make every moment here at college memorable.  However, I believe that I have been lying to myself and to others about who I really am, or at least who I used to be.

Just like the rest of the world expects to forget about our old life and start anew in "the real world" after college, I forced myself to forget my past and take a stab at maturity.  But denying the past makes a person forget where they came from and what they went through to get where they are today.  I have a bad habit of looking back and seeing the sour moments, the bad decisions, the missed opportunities, but I cheat myself out of all of the good memories that have also made me who I am today.  It was as if I stepped back from the chalkboard of my life at the end of high school, which was full of writing, some good, some bad, and just erased it all.  I didn't take the time to leave the good, I just erased it all.  Sure, it felt good to have a clean slate, but I had to forget myself to start anew.  Was it worth it?

Now that I'm the end of college, I feel like a four year old boy stepping out into a big, scary street with fast cars, rather than a 22 year old man.  I can't rely on everything I've learned in the past four years to support me alone.  There is gold my past; events that have changed things for me and made things the way they are today.  I can't ignore that.  I know I couldn't fathom this day when I was only seven years old, but it's here now, and I managed to get here somehow, if only by the grace of God. In three weeks, three years, three decades, when I am an official member of "the real world"  I want to say that life is good, but I also want to have the wisdom to look back and see that life was also good back in the day.  That I wouldn't be where I am without who I was.

Common Moments Best Left Unspoken

Some of the best moments that can be shared between people are those that take place after life-changing events.  When people share these moments together, the kind of moments that you will never forget, it brings about a level of closeness that can be experienced nowhere else.  The connection is made when the group of people is leaving this moment, coming out on the other side of the challenge or trial, and they take the time to share silent reflection.

I have experienced this several times.  When I was a teenager and my dad owned a boat, we would spend hours on the lake or river as a family.  Even though I had a great time riding in the inner-tubes and swimming, the best part of the day was always the drive back to the dock.  If we were on the Willamette river, we might have driven far up river, several miles away from our truck, and it would take fifteen minutes to drive back to the loading area.  During this time, we would wrap our wet legs in beach towels and face forward, letting the wind dry our hair.  As we let the setting sun soak our backs, we would silently share everything with each other.  In my mind, I told my parents that I was happy for the way they raised me at the end of every boating trip.  I told my brother how glad I was that we had each other to rely on.  My parents would tell both of us that they were proud of us, that they would be proud of us no matter what we grew up to do, but they would say it without sound.

I also felt this on the way to my friend's mother's funeral.  The drive to the cemetery took close to 30 minutes.  And although the car was void of talking the entire way, I couldn't imagine being anywhere else at the moment.  As I looked out at the expansive fields of yellow wheat and grain that made up most of the scenery on the way, I drew comfort from the fact that I wasn't alone in how I felt.  Words weren't necessary to create the bond in that moment, and I will never forget it.

Driving home after saying goodbye to a good friend at the airport, watching the news with classmates as two towers collapse, or simply walking from the chapel to your cabin at church camp after an amazing time of worship.  These are the moments that affect lives, that have affected my life.  The closest connections can be made through shared experiences, whether they are happy, or sad, trying, or comforting.  No matter what they are, they are meaningful, and I will never forget them.  I hope sometime this week you can take the time to remember moments like these that have changed your life, and the people that were there throughout it all.

These moments wouldn't exist without those people.