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!!

David Woodman

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.