No, I Didn't Drop Off the Map

I'm surprised to be were I am today. Honestly. 2-3 years ago, I would've said I didn't associate with girls, I wouldn't be caught dead dancing, my parents aren't as smart as people say they are, and electronic entertainment is the only thing that's fun to do in my spare time. Now, I couldn't even begin to imagine life without dance, most of my best friends are girls, I hardly ever touch game systems in any form (for games, since I obviously use the computer fairly frequently), and I have a deep respect for my parents and their cumulative wisdom.

I haven't really been posting very much... I know I said I would, but well, I got busy, forgot, and only remembered when I couldn't do anything about it. Hence, I'm now writing about things that happened clear back in December and bringing anybody who reads this up to speed with how I've been up until now.

I'll start with the Christmas Dance. I had been forewarned actually. I knew I was going to be asked the day before I was. My contact wasn't specific on who it was who was asking me. This annoyed me to no end. I hate surprises, I always have. I'd be much more content if people would just tell me and then have me act surprised, it would make things much more enjoyable. Anyway, it was a Saturday. Since I'm a bagger, I have to work Saturday, unless I have a really good reason to miss. I got off work and called my mom to come pick me up. No sooner do I hop in the car, than my mom says, "Brian, you have a surprise waiting for you at home." I guess you'd have to know my mom in order to understand how she said it, but I could guess everything except who asked me on the car ride home. When I got home, I found a bag of Salt Water taffy. I had to search through all the taffy's in order to peice together the message. I'd been asked by Susana. I said "yes", of course, there's a no brainer. Ironically, even though I talked to Susana on a regular basis, we never talked about/planned the dance at school. In fact, to my eternal regret, the first time either of us mentioned it again, was a week before the dance. By this time it was too late to put in my schedule for work and I ended up missing the day activity because of work. This made me sad, because I was really looking forward to this, as my first dance. Oh my, I'm getting carried away with details that nobody really wants too read... Well, to make a long story short, I had one of the best times of my life that day, and I wish that I could've videoed it so I could play it over again and again. Our dance group was great and I've made more friends because of it.

It was around this time that I started becoming friends with the people I had titled "The Susana and Brennon group". They were the only two people in the group that I was really friends with, but I was acquainted with all of them. I've gotten to be quite close with these people by now, and, if I had to choose a group to hang with all day every day, which is what happens frequently at Davis, it'd probably be them. Fortuanately, that kind of behavior isn't in my nature.

After Christmas time, life rolled on in it's normal, usual manner. I don't know whether it's a blessing or a curse that I don't deal with drama like the rest of people my age do. Sometimes I wish I did, because I feel kinda left out, but then I remind myself how miserable some people get because of it and how it changes people. I don't want to change dramatically like that, I want to be constant. I want to be someone who, no matter what, will alway's be close to the same, so that when someone else goes through a hard time, they can have the assurance that someone hasn't changed. In the book "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, theres a quote, "Some men in this world have been born to do unpleasant things..." (or something to that effect, since I'm going off memory here). I think that's actually a really good discription of me. Some people say that I've got it easy, not having drama and all, but I think they aren't counting there blessings, because being the odd one out is just as bad, and in my opinion worse.

Anyway, Sweethearts dance came, and with it, another host of fond memories. I got to meet a ton of cool people at Layton High that I didn't know until then. I was the only Davis kid there for the day activity, which was seeing the Pink Panther 2. At the dance I saw a ton of old friends. It actually made me sad. I was hoping that my friends would be the same, or at least, close to it. Nope. Go take a flying leap, Brian, cause that isn't the way it was. Don't get me wrong, I was glad to see them, and I love them still the same, but there was distance, and a change that was subtlely unsubtle. Oh well, part of high school I guess.

Sometime around this time, I started becoming...I guess a little more vain. I'm not really sure what brought it on, but all of a sudden I was using hair gel, buying designer clothes (AM's my favorite, I think), and I don't really know, but lot's of other really small changes. I guess this is what pushed the tables against me with my lunch group. All of a sudden I was drifting away from them. I didn't notice until later that all of a sudden, I didn't know how some of them were doing, because I just hadn't seen them. I've tried to make amends to that, with limited success, since the damage was done. Anyway, it's around this time that I developed my main philosophy on life (which I will be writing a blog on shortly), and swore myself to follow it always.

Time rolled on. Work was being brutal to me at 13 hours reliably every week, school was driving me insane, and a previously fast school year started becoming incredibly slow. My only relief was came in the form of Ballroom dancing. We were practicing quite hard for our upcoming performance and was the most relaxing thing I had... sad, huh? The performance rolled around, was an absolute success, and my performing high helped me restore an attitude of optimism. Within the week I had gone from and emotional Bottom, to Top, and then leveled out.

Amidst all the confusion, some of my Layton friends had 2 movie night party things. It was interesting times. I'd always know Morgan McDaniel, but I became better friends with her because of these party things. I eventually went to Morp with her, which was really fun, except that they played really terrible music that I don't really want to listen to ever again. I saw friends, who had changed even more, and promised myself that I'd have a get-together kind of thing sometime.

Now schools ended. I'll be honest, I'm worried. I'm not looking forward to next year... It'll be my hardest year in school, since I'm going from 0 AP tests to 5. I don't want to see my friends grow anymore distant. On top of all this, I'll be working, doing even more competetive ballroom, and who knows what else. You know what, though, I take that all back. I want these things to come. This is my challenge, my test. It's up to me to decide how I handle this. I need these things to happen to me. Why? Because they're happening to me for a reason. This is the way things were meant to be.


P.S. I'm sure that I made quite a few grammatical errors and such. Try not to let it bug you too much, because I'm not going to edit through this... to little time, so much to do, you know the drill.