Just as a disclaimer, please don't expect proper grammar and punctuation in this blog post, or any other future blog posts. I'll do my best with the spelling, but everything else is up in the air. Run-on sentences, incomplete sentences, numbered lists, and bullet points are all very good friends of mine, you will meet all of them very soon.
This blog entry is going to be a departure from my "school chronicles".
That's because this post is all going to be about one man.
David Woodman.
On this day, 9 years ago, David Woodman passed away.
He was just 22 years old.
I couldn't believe it.
I didn't want to.
I kept telling myself "This can't be real".
But unfortunately, it was.
I still remember the first day I met Dave.
Freshman Year, September, 2000.
I was still getting used to seeing faces from my own grade that I had been basically separated from for the last two years, since my grade was split into three "teams" for both 7th and 8th Grade.
Also, the nearby town of Granville also went to my high school, since Granville only had a school for up to 8th Grade.
There were a lot of new faces to get used to.
And that's when Dave Woodman first arrived.
He was someone I had not seen before, so I initially thought he must have been from Granville.
But he wasn't.
His family had moved to my town from San Jose, California.
I still remember the shirt he was wearing the first time i saw him in the hallway.
A blue and white polo shirt, and the collar was popped.
In all honesty, just by the way he carried himself, I thought he was conceited.
He had this smile on his face that just SCREAMED "arrogance" to me.
It was the first day of school, and he's already holding hands with one of the "popular girls", walking around like he owns the place.
I said to myself "Oh look at this kid, who does he think he is?!"
I was 100% ready to not like him.
But as you'll hear in life over and over again, that's why you NEVER judge a book by its cover!
Needless to say, I was wrong about him.
So very wrong!
The first week of school comes and goes.
I'm starting to get used to how everything works, where my classes are, and all of that fun stuff.
Then one fateful day in Health class, everything changed.
My Health class had seating arranged by last name.
Because of that, Dave sat right in front of me.
I tried to pay him no attention, due to being "100% ready to not like him".
But then he said something that got my attention.
He talked about professional wrestling.
All of my friends know that I LOVE professional wrestling.
I always have.
I had to do a "double take" when Dave talked about it with that same passion as I did.
I asked myself "Wait a minute, HE likes wrestling too?! This can't be!"
And then I took the leap of faith and I engaged him in conversation about wrestling.
It quickly became clear that he was a fan.
Just like me.
We had something in common.
Then we started having in depth conversations about wrestling outside of Health class.
We would talk wrestling at lunch in the cafeteria.
We would talk about wrestling passing each other in the hallway between classes.
One thing lead to another, and one day he was like "You should come hang at my house and we can play SmackDown on my PS2."
That was it.
That was the turning point.
That's when I realized I was wrong about this kid from California who was just being himself.
I went to his house for the first time a few days later, and the rest is history.
I think we played video games for like 8 hours in a row that first day.
It was magical.
I don't even know if we stopped to eat.
I don't even think we stopped to blink.
We were in the zone.
I met the rest of his family that day too.
Including his older sister, who I had actually met in one of my other classes first, before I knew who Dave was.
I didn't realize he had two younger brothers too.
I started to see a different picture.
I started to see the real picture.
Here's this kid who I had initially written off as someone who was "Arrogant", "Conceited", and "Probably an only child", who was actually the second of four kids, who had just moved here from the other side of the country, and was just doing his best to fit in.
I couldn't have BEEN any more wrong than I was with my initial assumption about him.
His family is one of the best families I have ever met.
It's because of him that I was able to meet them, and remain close with them to this day, and that will never change.
It all started with him.
He opened that door.
After our initial video game binge, we would hang out probably like 2-3 times a week.
We would go to Blockbuster and rent obscure PS2 games, along with the movie "Ready To Rumble", which we must have watched at least 1,000 times.
We used to go workout at the YMCA before school.
I still have no idea how I was even able to get out of bed at 6 a.m. to do that.
We would go to the movies, and he would sneak in an ENTIRE grande meal from Taco Bell.
Don't ask me how he did it, I still wonder how he did it myself sometimes!
He always ordered the same thing.
"6 Soft Tacos, 4 Bean Burritos".
Every time I go to Taco Bell, I can still hear his voice making the order in my head.
On Thanksgiving, I would go to his house to play football in the morning.
At halftime, we would all go inside to gorge ourselves on cinnamon rolls.
And star bread.
I. Love. Star. Bread.
I could eat it forever.
I looked forward to Thanksgiving every year.
It was a tradition.
Dave and I always made sure we were on the same team in gym class.
Dodgeball is a lot more fun when you're calling random audibles and "fake plays" that you've just made up 5 minutes earlier.
English 11 is one of my favorite classes that I've ever had in school.
That's 100% because of Dave.
He turned every class into a debate.
First with the teacher, then the teacher would split up the room.
Everyone on Dave's side of the argument, THAT HE MADE UP, on the left, and everyone on the teachers side of the debate on the right.
EVERY. SINGLE. CLASS.
We would come up with the most BS stuff we could think of, just to drag out the debates until class was over.
The next day, we did it all over again.
Some of the most fun I've ever had in an "academic class".
All thanks to Dave.
It was also during the "boom period" of my lollipop business, and it quickly became clear that no one took you seriously in the debate if you didn't have a lollipop, so business for me was VERY good in that class!
That was the thing about Dave.
He could play the "Devil's Advocate" about ANYTHING.
Just to get people talking.
He also had a VERY quick wit and sense of humor.
Just like me.
That's why we got along so well.
He's the kind of guy who would give you the shirt off of his back without thinking twice.
He's the kind of guy you would want right next to you in the trenches.
He loved his family.
He loved his friends.
And he would have done ANYTHING for either of them.
That's the kind of stand up guy he was.
After High School, he went off to college, so we didn't see each other nearly as much anymore, and I started hanging out with his younger brothers.
Whenever he did come back home, we would always pick up right where we left off.
It was like we never missed a beat.
In early 2008, I decided to set a goal for myself.
At first, my goal was to be able to take a picture of every contact that I had in my cell phone.
I figured if I knew someone well enough to have their phone number, I might as well have a picture of them too!
But as I started doing that, my goal had evolved into something MUCH bigger.
Facebook was still in its "early years" back then, but whenever you would go to a persons page that you were friends with, it would say "Pictures of you and (insert friends name here)" followed by the number of pictures you had together.
So then I started using the same mentality that I had with the phone contact pictures.
And one day I thought to myself "You know what? I'm going to make it a mission to try to take individual pictures with as many people that I know as possible!"
I decided that I would call it "The Ultimate Photo Album"
I started telling some of my friends about it.
We all agreed on one thing, that's a pretty big task.
In fact, it's the kind of goal that I was almost to afraid to even set for myself.
By my mind was made up, I was set on doing this!
I just kept telling myself "I'll start tomorrow!"
That turned into a week.
Then a month.
Then three months.
Then I finally got started.
I was asking everyone I knew.
Family.
Friends.
Friends Of Friends that became my friends.
Co-Workers.
Former Co-Workers.
You name it.
I had a camera, a tripod, and I told all of them the same thing.
"Whatever works for you, you name the time, you name the place, and I'll come to you!"
The response was overwhelming.
I even asked people that I told myself would be "beyond a longshot", just so I could tell myself that I at least TRIED, instead of wondering "What if" for the rest of my life.
They all said yes!
I couldn't believe it!
It meant so much more to me than just trying to complete this seemingly impossible task.
I would sit back and tell myself "These people are taking the time out of their day, no, the time out of their LIFE, just to take a picture with me, a memory that will be frozen in time, just to help me reach this goal"
Not because any of them HAD to.
But because they WANTED to.
Then on June 29th, 2008 David Woodman passed away.
It was devastating.
One of my best friends was gone.
It left a huge void.
Then I started beating myself up.
I told myself "If I didn't drag my feet on starting this project, I would have been able to take a picture with him for this album"
Now that can't happen.
Then I started questioning my motives.
I started wondering if every new picture that I took was just a vain, selfish attempt to replace the picture with Dave that I never took.
I had to take some time to really think about it.
I considered just giving up right there.
But then I came to my senses.
I know Dave wouldn't want me to quit on this.
I've dedicated my Ultimate Photo Album to him.
His passing has really hammered the point home that you just don't know what tomorrow can bring.
When we lose the people that we care about, we look to memories, stories, and pictures to remember them.
That's how they stay with us.
That's why my photo album is so important to me.
Two people can get together, take a picture, and they've just made a memory that can last forever.
And now here we are, 9 years since Dave passed away, and my Ultimate Photo Album is still in full swing.
I still have many people that I would love to take a picture with, and hopefully they can all happen someday.
Sometimes I'll look at the pictures that I've collected over all of these years, and I still find myself at a loss for words.
You may have left us 9 years ago.
But one thing is for certain David Woodman.
I'll never give up.
You can count on that.
