Alcohol? No Thanks.

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.

Most of my blog posts are light-hearted and fun.

This isn't one of those blog posts.

If that's enough for you to stop reading right here, I won't hold it against you!

As the title of this blog suggests, this post is about one thing.

Alcohol.

Now if you know anything about me, then the next phrase should come as no surprise.

"I don't drink alcohol."

That phrase has been met with pretty much every question as to "why".

Quite frankly, it just doesn't appeal to me.

It never has.

Some people have given me the side eye, as if I don't really mean that.

Not really sure why I would lie about that.

In fact, my feelings on alcohol are quite strong, and VERY well defined.

"Well what about wedding toasts?"

What about them?

Did I say "I don't drink alcohol, except for wedding toasts?"

No, I didn't. I even double checked. The rule still applies.

You don't need to make a toast with alcohol.

That shouldn't be breaking news.

"Is it a personal choice?"

Yes. 100%

"Haven't you ever wanted to at least TRY it?!"

Nope.

"I wonder what you would be like drunk!"

Keep wondering, because that's the closest you'll ever get.

"You don't know what you're missing!"

I'm not missing anything.

Then there's my personal favorite statement that i always here when people hear this "revelation" for the first time.

"Good for you!"

Now I have to make something clear here.

That phrase has been said to me in two completely different forms.

One of the forms is truly sincere, and genuine.

That's not the one I'm talking about.

The other form is condescending and disingenuous.

Bingo.

I have never seen anyone do anything while "under the influence" that has made me take a step back and say "Wow, I'm really missing out there!"

It's actually the opposite.

It only helps to reinforced what I have felt from the very beginning.

I'm not missing a single thing.

Underage drinking is seemingly a right of passage these days too.

Granted, it probably always has been, but you get the idea.

Everyone trying to scramble through the liquor cabinet and go to that one friends house where their parents aren't home.

Shotgunning beers as fast as you can, as if it's some sort of accomplishment.

As if it's something actually to be proud of.

To the point where they ALWAYS have to have a beer of some kind in their hands at all times.

They can't even let go of it to take a picture.

For ten seconds.

I never understood that.

I never will.

Then you have "The College Experience", which is apparently supposed to be the super awesome feeling of racking up anywhere from $40,000 - $80,000 in student loan debt while getting blackout drunk for four years around your "peers" who definitely don't have your best interests in mind.

I'm glad I missed out on that "Experience".

I've seen people become the absolute worst versions of themselves.

Thanks to alcohol.

I've seen people turn into someone that I no longer recognize.

Thanks to alcohol.

If those people were like that when they were sober, I would have never been friends with them in the first place.

That's how drastic of a change it is for some people.

It's flat out scary.

The horror stories that I have heard.

The horror stories that I have SEEN.

I would never want to do that to myself.

I would never want to voluntarily make the decision to alter my mental faculties to such a degree that someone else has to tell me what happened after the fact, because I will have no memory of actually doing it.

All in the name of "having a good time"?

Where is the appeal in that?

Am I missing something?

Why would I ever want to do that to myself?

I would never want to be unable to walk under my own power, slurring my words, and potentially throwing up all over the place, and calling it "a good night".

Now don't get me wrong, I know plenty of people who drink, but they drink responsibly.

They drink in moderation.

It's that little message that they always say at the very end of those glorified alcohol commercials.

In the tiny white letters.

No one looks at those tiny white letters on a TV commercial.

Those tiny white letters are only there to begin with because they HAVE to be.

Drink Responsibly.

What does that even mean?

Well as this whole blog has hopefully established by now, I don't drink.

But as someone on the outside looking in, depending on said "drink", I would say one, maybe two drinks, usually with dinner or at a social gathering.

No mental faculties altered.

No equilibrium has been compromised.

There's a huge difference between that, and just flat out drinking that's only stopped when your body finally steps in and says "enough".

That's when you blackout.

That's when things can go really wrong, really fast.

I would never wish that on anyone.

I would never want to see that happen.

That's why you won't find me at most parties.

Not the ones where people that I know and care about are about to become people that I no longer recognize.

I've seen that happen far too often enough as it is.

It's a terrible sight.

I've hated it every single time.

At that point I feel helpless.

In that moment, those people might as well be a stranger on the street.

That's how much they have changed.

I go from being surrounded by people, having a coherent conversation, joking, laughing, and having a good time, to being completely alone.

Two words.

It. Sucks.

Any story that someone tries to tell me that starts with "So we were all drinking..." or anything along those lines, is a story that you can stop right there.

I've already heard enough.

I'm not going to be impressed.

I've seen alcohol ruin families.

I've seen alcohol ruin friendships.

I've seen alcohol ruin LIVES.

You'll see a commercial that demonizes smoking and tobacco use.

And rightfully so, because I think smoking is also terrible for you.

If lungs could talk, they would all say the same thing.

But then you'll see a commercial that glorifies alcohol right after the anti tobacco one.

Not so breaking news flash!

Alcohol can be Just. As. Dangerous.

Especially drunk driving.

It doesn't really help matters that the first thing that alcohol alters is judgment (I guess something DID stick with me from Health Class), so people who are in NO condition to operate any type of motor vehicle tell themselves "Yeah, I'm fine to drive".

Now those same people are literally putting the lives of themselves and others into their currently incapable hands.

Others who had nothing to do with that alcohol that someone else decided to consume before getting behind that wheel.

People who are just trying to drive home safely.

It's not worth it.

It's never worth it.

I can't stress that enough.

There's also people who have been led to believe that "You can't have a good time without alcohol".

That couldn't be any farther from the truth.

In fact, if the only way that you CAN have "fun" is WITH alcohol, then that is a very, very big problem.

If it reaches that point, now we're talking about an even more serious matter.

Addiction.

That's a completely different can of worms.

I won't even attempt to open that can, but I will say this, addiction is terrible.

In closing, I don't need alcohol.

I don't need alcohol to "have a good time".

I don't need alcohol for any reason whatsoever.

I don't need it, and I don't want it.

If you're going to drink, please, drink responsibly.

I don't want to see anyone else get hurt because of choices made with alcohol.

As for me, I'll stick with never drinking to begin with.

It's one decision that I'll never regret.

Senior Year?! YUP!

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.

The year was 2004.

My Senior Year at Southwick Tolland Regional High School.

15 Years Ago.

Fifteen YEARS.

Wow.

It's hard to believe that I've been out of school longer than I've been in school.

And yet, here we are.

By the time my Senior Year rolled around, my lollipop business got hit with a HUGE roadblock.

We got a new principal that year, and he wasn't a fan of people eating anything in the halls.

That's where 95% of my business took place.

He just ruined 95% of my business!

It was at that moment that I realized it was time to pack it up.

It was a good run.

We'll always have the memories.

Of the 8 classes I had left in my High School career, only three of them were required for me to actually graduate.

The other 5 were electives, basically just there to take up space.

Gym class was one of those electives.

Because obviously.

I also took Spanish 4 as an elective.

You only needed two years of a foreign language.

Yet I took 4.

Perhaps I was a glutton for punishment.

The jury is still out on that one.

The three classes that I HAD to take were English 12, Physics, and a nice little class called Speaking, Writing, and Research.

There were two versions of that class, regular, and advanced

Full disclosure, I mentally checked out as often as I could, so I had no desire for any "advanced" class.

It's still the biggest mistake I ever made in my entire school career.

The only difference between the regular class (that I took) and the advanced one was the research paper due at the end of the semester.

Two extra pages for the advanced class.

That was it.

Now I bet you're wondering why I regretted not taking the advanced class, I mean why would I regret having to write three pages on a research topic of my choosing instead of five pages?

It had nothing to do with the pages.

It had EVERYTHING to do with the fact that MY BEST FRIENDS WERE IN THE OTHER  CLASS. 

I didn't find out until everything was locked in.

It was too late for me to switch.

They were having fun in their class.

They were making jokes and laughing in their class.

Me?

I got put into a four person group project that included a French Foreign Exchange Student who didn't speak a single word of English.

I was then told by my teacher that my four person group was technically going to be three people doing the work, and that the Foreign Exchange Student would get whatever grade that my group got, even though she didn't have to do anything.

Also, there was going to be no "individual grade" for this group project, just one grade for the entire group.

Which meant if either of my other two group members didn't carry their weight on this project, MY GRADE WOULD SUFFER.

Long story short?

I wrote an entire radio play by myself, because my other two group members couldn't handle making a timeline where I gave them every date and event that needed to be entered.

Apparently I was asking for too much.

Mind you, every other group had FOUR PEOPLE DOING THIS.

I had one person who couldn't speak or understand a word of English, and two other full members of the English speaking tribe who were also grand masters of being inept.

It was magical.

Luckily I decided to mentally check in, you know, since I wanted to graduate and all.

My "group" got an A+.

Meanwhile my BEST FRIENDS IN THE OTHER VERSION OF THIS CLASS were telling me what they had come up with in their group.

I should have been in their group.

I should have been in their class.

But hey, it's fine.

It's not like I still think about it to this day or anything.

It's not like I've dedicated a huge chunk of this blog post 15 years later about it or anything.

Like I said, it's fine.

I also had the same teacher for English 12 and Speaking, Writing, and Research.

That meant I either had to do my homework for both classes, or skip it, I couldn't do one or the other.

I mean I'm crafty when it comes to thinking of stuff off the top of my head when it came to the whole "no homework" excuses over the years, but I'm not THAT crafty.

Or am I?

In my High School, you had the same homeroom for all four years.

All four years I never had my homeroom teacher, Mr. Tarpinian, for any of my actual classes.

When I took Physics in my last semester, that finally changed!

I finally didn't have to go anywhere for my first class of the day!

Now for those of you who went to school with me, you already know what Mr. Tarpinian looked like.

You know what he sounded like.

But for everyone else, let me give you the best possible description.

Imagine a cross between Ben Stein, and the guy who played Robert Barone on "Everybody Loves Raymond".

Boom. That's Mr. Tarpinian.

Turns out he actually knew his Physics too.

Who knew?

By the time the year was coming to a close, it was starting to sink in.

School was almost over.

For good.

College was never in the cards for me.

I never fully understood why the school that you have to PAY for, AFTER going to school for 12 years, was supposed to be the only one that "mattered".

What were these 12 years for?

I was all set.

Looking back on it now, and the amount of people that I've seen get into HUGE amounts of debt thanks to Student Loans, which they're still paying off now, and then not even get a job in the field that they got their degree in, which is what they took out the Student Loans for to begin with, makes me glad I dodged that bullet.

With the full on Digital Age we're in right now, it's easier than ever to generate revenue streams from your own home in your spare time, while still having a full time job.

And speaking of streaming..........

Let's just say all these years of video games may not have been "a waste of time" after all.......

But that's another story for another time......

There was one thing left to do before graduation.

A return trip to High Meadows!

I had not been there since 8th Grade.

It was a LONG four years, but it was just as magical as I had remembered!

To this day I've still wanted to go back there, with a huge group of people.

Once High Meadows was over, there was just one thing left on the horizon.

Something I had been looking forward to since I was in 1st Grade.

Walking down that hill.

I saw it for years.

The graduating class had their year of graduation dug into the hill.

I remember watching the years go by on that hill.

Then it finally read "2004".

This was it.

It was finally my turn.

Everyone was going to go their separate ways after this.

I grew up with these people.

Literally.

Over the past 12 years I had spent as much time with these people as I had with my family, maybe even more at times!

I was hit with every emotion you could think of.

Happiness.

Sadness.

Anxiety.

Wonder.

Hope.

It was a long 12 years.

It was a fun 12 years.

It was a time of my life that I'll never forget.

15 years have gone by in the blink of an eye.

I think I'll take a next 15 a little slower!

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.

Sophomore 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.

It's been far too long since my last blog post.

I know!

But I'm back now, so let's get to it!

The year was 2001.

My Sophomore year of high school was about to begin.

But less than two weeks into the school year, something terrible happened.

The terrorist attacks of September 11th.

Everyone remembers where they were that day.

For me, I had just walked into school that morning.

Every room had a television, and all of them were on various news channels.

No one was teaching anything that day in my school.

People were trying to make sense of what they were seeing.

There were people who were crying, and others who were shocked into silence.

Everyone else was somewhere in between.

People lost their lives. 

People lost their family members, their friends, and loved ones.

It's been over 16 years since that horrific tragedy happened.

Never forget.

It took a few weeks for things to at least seem to be getting back to normal at my school.

Once Thanksgiving and Christmas came around, I started to see smiles on faces that had not smiled in months.

That was a good thing to see.

Now that I had one of of high school under my belt, I knew the lay of the land.

The new Freshman class also had some of my best friends in it, so it was nice to be able to see them on a daily basis again!

I also now had Gym class three times a week.

That's a win folks.

I also had something else from the end of my Freshman year to expand upon...

My lollipop side business!

It started small the year before, with classmates trying to out bid each other for blow pops.

I knew I had to expand on that!

My inventory increased dramatically.

Now I had blow pops, paintbrush pops, starburst pops, dum dums, banana pops, caramel apple pops, crush soda pops, and hot chocolate pops!

My book bag was now filled with lollipops, and I would keep all of my school books in my locker!

Word of mouth quickly spread around the entire school.

I was now "The Candy Man".

It was INSANE!

My friends wanted them.

Other students that I never even talked to, FROM ALL GRADES wanted them.

MY TEACHERS WANTED THEM!

Every time I would walk into a class, I would always go to the teacher first, so they could have first dibs.

Once I had the teacher in my pocket, I mean uhh, once the teacher was given the proper respect for being my elder, I would then take my seat.

Then the hustle began.

People would pass quarters to me like they used to pass notes back in the day.

I know who liked what flavor.

All it took was eye contact. 

I was dishing out lollipops with one hand, and collecting quarters with the other hand.

People would stop me in the hallway between classes.

Lunch time?

Forget about it.

It was madness.

I would sell out of everything every single day.

I'd take the revenue from Day 1, buy my new inventory for Day 2, and still have a nice big chunk of pocket change that was straight profit.

For a 15 year old with no job, no car, and most importantly, NO BILLS, any profit was good profit!

But to be totally honest, I got most of my revenue from people that I didn't know, who just ASSUMED that the lollipops were 25 cents each, and I never exactly confirmed OR denied that.

My friends always got them for free.

So did the girls, you know, because chivalry isn't dead!

I was providing a service!

Those were fun times!

Speaking of fun times, another new sensation was just starting to make it's way to the U.S. from Japan.

Three letters.

DDR.

Also known as "Dance Dance Revolution".

It's a music video game series.

Basically, you stand on a raised metal platform that has four colored arrows at your feet, and the video monitor is in front of you.

The arrows are Up, Down, Left, and Right.

You then pick one of the many songs in the game, (many of which are mainstream songs, or covers of mainstream songs) and the song starts, and a bunch of those arrows start appearing at the bottom of the scree, scrolling upwards.

The goal is to step on the correct arrow when that arrow reaches the top of the screen.

The concept seems simple enough, but that couldn't be any farther from the truth!

I remember the first time I saw someone play it at the Holyoke Mall.

I was already hooked.

Songs are given a rating of 1-10, with 1 being the easiest difficulty, and 10 being the hardest.

The harder the song, the more arrows (or "steps') it contains, along with the song usually being at a faster tempo, along with a much more complex pattern of steps that need to be hit in a very rapid succession!

Miss enough steps, and you fail!

When I first saw it being played in person, I thought to myself "I'd love to be able to do that, but there's no way!"

Then I found out that some of my very best friends had already been playing at a high level!

I knew I had to catch up!

I started off small, playing the home version of the game at my friends house, (which comes with flimsy plastic mats that slip all over the place unless you can secure them down properly) which allowed me to make a fool out of myself OUTSIDE of public view.

That went on for a few months.

I practiced as often as I could.

When me and my friends would go to the arcade at the mall, I would watch them play, because I was too nervous to try it in public!

Then one day, I went to the mall with my cousin, who was also getting into it, and he said "you're playing today".

I figured he was just joking.

He wasn't.

So, I played.

And I passed all of the songs!

I was out of breath, and sweating everywhere, but I did it.

At that point, I wasn't nervous anymore.

It was time to attempt even harder songs.

To build up my stamina.

I'll tell you right now.

I don't care WHAT shape you're in.

If you play the wrong song to start off your set, (usually 3 or 4 songs, depending on what your local arcade has set as the standard limit on your machine) you will be completely out of breath, your legs will be shaking, and your throat will be ON FIRE!

But I must admit, for me, it's one of the best feeling in the world!

Full disclosure?

I still play it to this day!

Between running my lollipop business five days a week, also called "school" I guess, and DDR, that pretty much took up all of my time during my Sophomore Year!

My Junior Year on the other hand, well, we will get to that next time!!