OK, so maybe I do requests, Pt. 2
continued from the last entry…
6. I was president of the youth group I attended my Junior year in high school. One day, during my spring break, I get a phone call from the VP, who got a call from a member who said that they had gotten into a verbal sparring match with the Youth group leader, who I’d helped select the previous summer. After much talking and trying to calm everyone down, it ended up that the church demanded the youth leaders resignation. I did some more looking into it, and to me, the whole thing smells from the first phone call I got to the night the church leaders held a meeting to tell us what happened. The jaded nature I have about church politics started right here. I didn’t trust anything they said after that. It’s not that they weren’t telling the truth, or that they didn’t believe what they were saying. I just had the fiosachd hit, and the whole thing wasn’t right, and I never felt comfortable with the way it was handled. Apparently, I’m the only one. I’ve mentioned this several times, and there were allusions made by people who were on the “ins” that there were other issues, that demanded the course of action that was taken. I, for one, don’t buy it. I think they were looking for an excuse. Period. It was too tidy, too concerted for something that happened over the course of 2 days.
7. Junior year, our youth group went through the ‘pairing up’ stage, and everyone hooked with everyone. Pretty soon, it ended up being a divisive thing in the youth group. As the youth group president, and thinking that people would listen to me (even then, I should have known better) I called a meeting and told the people what I saw was happening: the youth group was becoming a dating club rather than a ministry group. And everyone told me I was nuts. A year later, things were a disaster, from my perspective. I watched the whole thing happen, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. What’s worse, after it happened, they made me feel like it was my fault that the whole thing happened. As I watched it happen, the famous incident occurred where I got so frustrated, that I went to a local park and ripped a small tree out of the ground. For a long time, I just kept a 2X4 in the backyard to attack trees whenever my anger and frustration got beyond my ability to control it. I can’t tell you the amount of use that thing got. I’d walk very calmly to the park, and then I would just take the straightjacket off and go crazy. I pulled so many splinters from my hands, I can’t even tell you. That’s not even mentioning the several times I broke my hands or separated my thumbs from punching things. The worst day was the day I punched a brick wall. You should have seen me trying to write after that. *shakes head* Not good times, bad times.
8. Senior year, it was a week before track season started. My relay team had been working out and stuff, getting ready for the season, because we’d done really well the previous year, going to sectionals before losing out on a trip to state by .16 seconds, and we were all coming back. The week before the season started, I’m playing basketball in gym, and as a cadet, I was expected to play…I wasn’t special enough to be in “Special Gym” with the rest of the athletes, so I’m playing, having a good time, I make a drive to the hoop on a fastbreak, and someone pushes me from behind. I end up sprawling into a brick wall, and jacked my left knee. I got bursitis, and I was out for three weeks. I came back too early, and got a hip pointer in the other leg. In short, the injury cost me my senior year of track, which should have been my swansong. I haven’t gotten the step I lost from that injury. And I knew it when it happens. Exquisite the agony, odi excrusior, I’m telling you. If you were a surgeon and you wanted to cause pain, it would be impossible to do a better job.
9. Between Junior and Senior year, I got into a relationship for the wrong reason. (I’ve already written about this, so I don’t want to rehash it too much…) At any rate, I was coming off of my getting dumped at prom debacle (and it was a debacle), and I was getting shut down all over the place. In that state, I started dating a girl who lived a long way from me, and made a whole lot of promises and said a whole bunch of things that I didn’t have any real chance of honoring in the long run. I’m not sure I knew it when I said those things, but I did know it pretty soon afterwards. After just ignoring the girl (like that was a constructive way to deal with the situations…brilliant Nick, just brilliant), she phoned me and ultimately, accused me of being a liar. What’s worse was that she was right. It was a terrible thing to be the one on that side of the phone. After having been dumped and taken advantage of exclusively up to that point, I thought I’d had the worst of it. The truth is, I was wrong. The only thing worse than being dumped is to be the one to do the dumping. I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant for her either, but I was totally unaware of the ramifications of shutting someone down. I prayed at the time that I would never be in the position again–of having been a liar and a cheat. *shakes head* I didn’t know that less than a year later, I’d go the next step and do the unthinkable. But that’s another entry.
10. Senior year, I remember graduation. For me, I didn’t figure graduation would be that big a deal. I knew it was coming, I knew that it was just one step in the process of life. I was ready, or so I thought. I don’t think the gravity of understanding the 13 years of existence I’d shared with the group of people I graduated with really hit me until I walked down the hallway for that last time, my teachers weeping as we passed. And at the moment I hit that gymnasium, with Pomp and Circumstance blaring, the melancholy hit me. And I sat there for the entire ceremony, just wishing it would end so I could escape it. And of course, there is no escape. And there is no way, at that time, to adequately express what those years meant to you. Were they the best years of my life? No, not by a long shot. But that ceremony marked a passage from one thing to something very diffferent, and I didn’t realize it until it was already passing me by. Did I do all the things I wanted to while I was high school? Not by a long shot. It’s tragic to me now to think about that day and all the closure it meant on that chapter of my life…with all it’s questions, etc, etc. And if anyone high school aged is reading this, do your best to make the time worth something, but you won’t really appreciate it until you’ve walked and gotten on past it for a while. Life is never the same after you walk across that stage. That I promise.
I think that about covers it. And they say I never do requests. Ah well. Have a good one everyone.