Junior Year!

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.

I must admit it. 

I've missed this!

The year was 2003.

Well, technically it was 2002 for the first four months, but let's just round up.

I was officially a junior in high school.

That meant a few things.

By years end I'd be able to drive my first car.

That meant me and Chris Savva could now go to the mall and play DDR whenever we wanted to.

Max 300.

Paranoia Survivor.

Sakura.

The Legend Of Max.

Tsugaru.

Rhythm & Police.

Pizzeria Regina.

Beverages from The Greek Place (that's the actual name) because the lines were always too long everywhere else, and we had a DDR machine to get back to.

Oh the memories.

My lollipop side business was in full swing at this point.

Even the teachers wanted them.

It got to the point where my school bag was filled with lollipops, and my books were in my locker, instead of the other way around.

Teachers in my classes gave everyone five minutes before class officially started to get whatever lollipops they wanted so it wouldn't "disrupt the class later".

Now I'm not going to say that I had any of the teachers in my pocket.

But.

Mr. O'Connor did enjoy the Orange Crush Pops.

That's all I'm saying.

Who knew Geometry could be so fun?!

Anyway, about the lockers we had at the high school.

Well.

Our lockers also had a little trick to them.

They had their own built in combination locks, but you could just kick the bottom of the locker, and they would open.

Kind of defeats the purpose of the lock right?

Just like you can open "locked" luggage with a pen, and then close it right back up as if it were never opened, fun fact.

Anyway.

One of my friends, who will remain nameless, (Andy Moure, oops) decided he wanted a lollipop when he knew my bag was in my locker.

So he kicked it.

The locker opened.

He took a blue paintbrush pop.

He put my bag back in my locker.

He then closed the locker, not realizing the strap to my bag was still hanging out.

When I got to my locker, I certainly noticed.

I checked my bag.

I knew exactly what was missing.

It was a side business after all.

That meant, fun fact, I KEPT INVENTORY.

But ironically enough, that was actually a blessing in disguise.

After the strap got stuck, it must have jarred something with my locker, because from that point on, you could NO LONGER kick my locker to open it.

It actually STAYED LOCKED, you know, like a locker should be in the first place.

Thanks Andy Moure!

I had every kind of lollipop that you could imagine back then.

Paintbrush Pops.

Starburst Pops.

Blow Pops.

Crush Soda Pops.

Dum Dums Pops.

Caramel Apple Pops.

Hot Chocolate Pops.

Chupa Chups Pops.

Tootsie Pops.

Charms Sweet Pops.

You name them.

I had them.

And sold them.

25 cents a piece.

A bag cost 3 dollars at the most.

Each bag had anywhere from 20-30 pops.

You. Do. The. Math.

And to think it all started way back in my freshman year, when Curt Despard offered me 50 cents for a piece of gum in Mr. Wingard's "Algebra 1 - Volume 2" class.

Crazy.

The San Antonio Spurs would win the NBA Championship that year, ending the three years reign of Shaq & Kobe's Lakers.

No one was happier than me.

I was a Portland Trailblazers fan back in those days.

The rest should speak for itself there.

Now that I was a junior, I also had gym class every day.

No more health class in between gym class days anymore.

Game. Changer.

Of course that didn't stop my gym teachers from being lazy every now and then.

"Hey class, we're.........going for a walk today."

What?!

GOING FOR A WALK?!

I don't want to GO FOR A WALK.

WE HAVE AN ENTIRE GYM AT OUR DISPOSAL.

We could play any number of sports and games!

Nope, let's go for a walk instead!

Luckily that only happened every now and again.

Then we finally got into the good stuff.

Basketball.

Volleyball.

Dodgeball.

Long Base, which was a hybrid indoor version of kickball that always got out of hand, but in the best possible way, also apparently a Southwick original, since no one else has ever heard of it.

Badminton, where Jon Dunham used to say "Cheery old mate, righty oh!" before he would serve every time, at my request.

Capture The Flag.

Ultimate Frisbee.

Floor Hockey.

Speedball, which was a combination of football, soccer, and basketball.

I always had gym class last too, so I always had something to look forward to, no matter how boring the rest of the day was.

I also had two of my other all time favorite classes that year, Spanish 3, and English 11.

Now neither of those classes were my favorite because of the actual content I learned in those classes, but because of WHO I had in those classes.

I mean sure, I still learned SOMETHING in those classes.

Like how to talk English more better.

I also had my first job.

The Summer House.

If you're from Southwick or you've ever been there, then it needs no explanation.

For everyone else, it's the best.

Plain and simple.

The best part was making things for myself that were never on the menu, just my own little creations.

Delicious creations I might add.

Junior year was a great year.

If I could get any years all over again, junior year would definitely be on that list!

That leaves us with one year left.

Senior year.

But that story is for another day!

My. Biggest. Regret.

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.

19 Months.

That's how long it has been since my last blog post.

It's been far too long.

Sometimes life gets in the way of.....life.

I believe we left off at my Sophomore Year of High School.

My Junior Year was a year to remember.

You'll hear all about it, just.....not yet.

In due time.

But this particular blog post is going to be about something else.

If the title was any indication, it's about something we all have.

Regrets.

I've heard plenty of people say that have no regrets.

I never believed any of them.

Maybe saying you have no regrets is your defense mechanism.

Maybe saying you wouldn't go back and change anything if given the chance is a lie you've told yourself so much that, for all intents and purposes, it's the truth to you now.

Who knows.

Just my two cents.

At the end of the day I can't truly speak for anyone else.

But I can speak for myself on this.

And I'm telling you right now, I have regrets.

Many regrets.

Some big.

Some small.

And then there's one that stands above the rest.

My. Biggest. Regret. 

The moment I wish I could erase.

It was many years ago.

Probably 14 years at this point.

I used words.

That's the thing about words.

We all use them.

Every. Single. Day.

We use them when we're happy.

We use them when we're sad.

We use them when we're mellow.

We use them when we're mad.

That was a poem.

I used words to hurt someone.

I didn't say them out loud.

I typed them.

Just like I'm doing right now.

It was intentional.

It was callous.

It had vitriol.

It had malice.

And it was public.

For everyone to see.

I was angry at the time.

Doing anything while you're angry usually doesn't yield anything good.

This was no exception.

Instead of talking it out in private, I decided to make it public.

Instead of doing the right thing, I took what I felt was the easy way out.

I wrote what felt like a novel.

At the time I told myself that if I didn't specifically "name any names", then it would just be a glorified venting session.

Or some stupid rationale like that.

I wrote it.

I read it.

Three times.

I should have just taken a step back.

I should have just taken a deep breath.

I should have taken the extra ten seconds it would have taken to stop being so stubborn.

I shouldn't have sent it.

But I did.

I hurt someone.

It was wrong.

I knew it was wrong, and I didn't care.

The part of me that knew it was wrong from the beginning was overpowered by my anger.

That's a feeling I hope to never experience again.

I hurt a friend.

You're not supposed to hurt your friends.

Yet that's exactly what I did.

Words are a powerful tool.

They can cut deep.

And they are at the mercy of whoever uses them.

I used them in the worst way possible on that day.

Then I remained stubborn afterwards.

I didn't want to admit just how wrong I was from the nanosecond after I hit "publish".

It took me longer than I'd like to admit for reality to finally set in.

And then it all just hit me like a ton of bricks.

The sorrow.

The remorse.

The anger at myself.

I couldn't believe what I had done.

The things that I said.

The terrible, terrible things that I said.

I said them.

I had never been more sorry for anything I had ever done in my entire life.

When I finally mustered up the courage to apologize and ask for forgiveness, I didn't expect to receive it.

I was ready to accept that.

I tried to put myself in their shoes.

What they must have felt.

I deserved whatever was coming to me.

I could barely look them in the eye.

I couldn't even put words together.

I couldn't apologize ENOUGH.

And then.......it happened.

They forgave me.

After everything I did, and the manner in which I did it.

They forgave me.

If I could go back in time and erase it from existence, I would.

But I can't.

All I could do was ask for forgiveness.

And they forgave me.

Maybe they even forgot.

But I didn't.

I never forgot what I did.

And I never forgot that they still found it in their heart to forgive me.

I didn't think I deserved it.

I wouldn't have blamed them.

Not one bit.

But they still forgave me.

My. Biggest. Regret.

Sorry to get all somber in my return to the blogging world.

But blogs are supposed to help you get things off your chest.

A decade and a half later, and I still can't shake it sometimes.

But this.

This helps.