The beginning of the end.

Saturday is the start of the end. The end of my teenage years. It will be my last year as a teenager. Here are my teenage memories.

13: 7Th grade English class, Ms. Cox teaching. Neal Hovorka threw a paper dart at me, it landed directly into my tear duct, thus keeping it self sustained in my eye without pain. We kept it there for a couple minutes cause it was pretty cool!

14: Sitting on my parents bed, sobbing and hugging my family because we had just heard some terrible news about one of the greatest men to bless our family, the first time I had lost someone really close to me.

15: Soon to be a driver on the road, my friend Tyler Gaisford decided to teach me to drive a stick. I wrecked his T-bird! Totaled it! We lied to the cops so I would still be ably to get a license.We confessed the whole thing to our parents a week later. I got a $62 fine and a stern warning.

16: Having Carynn calling me in the middle of one of my classes to tell me to meet her downstairs, I went down not knowing what was going on. I found her in the hall her face smeared with tears, she hugged me, then told me that one of our friends had taken her own life the night before.


17: Was mentioned in the opening prayer of sacrament meeting, due to a head on collision I was involved in just outside the church. It happened right before church was to begin so the whole neighborhood saw Riley, his Dad, the Cops, and the wreckage as they were pulling in for church.

18: Moved away to college, found out a lot about myself, how I handle situations, and where I turn when I'm in need. Made a lot of new friends, and got called to serve in the LA California Spanish Speaking Mission for the LDS Church.

19: We'll just have to wait and see!!!

Switch blade?

I recently attended a church meeting where the speaker rambled on about switch points in his life. Apparently he had served in the same BYU Student stake for 11 years! He talked of how he being realesed is simply another switch point in his life. This got me to reflect upon my own life. I'm heading to one of the biggest switch points I will ever have.

I don't think of this as a "switch point" though. It's a switch BLADE. A point you see it coming and you gradually ease into the new curve of the twisting and widing track we call life. I may see this coming but there's no way I can gradually ease into leaving my friends and family for two years, learn a new language and go change people's lives.

This is a switch blade that will strike hard. I'm ready for some of it. I'm ready to try new things, as I like to think I always am and love to do it, this new thing though will be the hardest of my life. This is the switchblade into adult.

In two years I'll come back and be expected to actually do something with that life, I'll need to go to school, become somebody, do something that will somehow effect the world. I have to like it too or it won't get done.

I guess that is one of my greatest fears, returning from the field and finding out that the thing I want to do will not be the easiest thing or the highest paying or even the best to raise a family on. Family, I'm expected to have a family within the next five to ten years. Me a family?! Me getting married? I don't even think I look for a ring on the left finger when I see an attractive young lady, I guess I better start.

I'm about to see how quick this switchblade is. I have a few months and then it's off with my life!