Keep My Path In Sight, But Do Not Follow It

Having two sons and knowing that death will one day be upon me, I'd like to express some things that have been on my mind most of the day today. I envision life as a journey through a forest, some will take the well beaten path, some will wander throughout. Take note Sons, as I ask that you keep my path in sight, but do not follow it.

I view myself in two ways and both are very different. Who I am in my head, and Who I am to others.

In my head I am an adventurous, artistic, creative, generous, giving, somewhat outgoing person. A person who sees the pathway through the woods, keeps it in sight, but is not afraid to wander every now and again. However, if I step back and look at my self from a distance, I see none of these traits or characteristics in myself. I walk down the path, occasionally stopping to look around, thinking about deviating from whats ahead, but in the end continuing on, dwelling on what could have been. Honestly, if I was someone else looking at me I'd be hard pressed to find any of the above traits. Sure I help out when asked or needed, but I don't often volunteer for anything on my own. I show small signs of being creative, I can kind of draw, play instruments, take photographs, but I don't put enough time and energy into these tasks to get better at them. I don't adventure anywhere, and don't have anything that I am truly passionate about. I'll just sit here in my head and think, someday I'll take the time to do these things rather than do it now because tomorrow might not be here.

So I write this with a hope that you approach life differently than I do.

I hope that you both find some creative outlet and stick with it. Whether its art, music, photography, film, etc. Find something to be passionate about and be passionate about it.

Be kind to others. Don't just nod and smile when someone else looks your way. Converse with them, connect with them.

Don't be afraid to try new things, or be adventurous. Don't waste time just dreaming about it, go out and experience life. Put the phone/computer or whatever next-gen tech device there is down and live. Wander off the path for a while.

Don't always worry about the consequences. Part of my problem is that I over analyze decisions and always find the bad outcome. Don't worry about the outcome. You will make good decisions and bad decisions and you won't know which one is which until much later.

Do not be afraid to speak your mind, sometimes. I say sometimes, because we all have opinions and not every one is a good one. I keep quiet about far too much. If you feel strongly about something let it be said. 

I have every bit of faith that you will know what you are doing in life when you become grown men. This will be because you have learned from myself, as I did from my Father and his before him. Don't let allow me to forget this when my memory starts to slip.

Do not be afraid of what anyone else thinks of what you are doing. Let them be concerned with their own decisions and shortcomings in life. Know that one day you will all come to the end of the path and will only have the experiences you've created. 

Remember me in a good light. Know that I did not intend to always come across as yelling at you. It is a family flaw. I do what I do out of love for you both. You will not understand this until you both have young children of your own.

Changing who I am in my head to who I am in person will be a challenge, but I will always work on it to better myself for you both. I hope to grow old and watch you both become the men I know you can be, but we will never know when the forest will come to an end or what is on that other end when we get there. We can only hope to travel through it together for as long as we can. 

Murder in the City - The Avett Brothers

This was one of the very first songs from The Avett Brothers that I heard. Little did I know the impact this song would have on my life. I have always been a sucker for a good depressing song. You know the type, pretty much any music my wife doesn't like. 

Anyways a few years back when my Uncle Keith overdosed on pain pills (that's a whole other post) my Dad was assembling the memorial videos for his funeral and I recalled this song and sent it to him. Needless to say, this song kind of became our families go to remembrance song. I however, do no longer see it in this light. 

The second verse of the song has really struck a chord with me since my boys were born. It goes...

     I wonder which brother is better

     which one our parents love the most

     I sure did get in lots of trouble

     They seemed to let the other go 

     A tear fell from my Father's eye

     I wondered what my Dad would say 

     He said,

     "I love you & am proud of you both

      In so many different ways" 

Two sons, so very different. I can't wait to see all the things they do in life and hope that I can be a positive guiding influence to them. 

Hey I forgot I have one of these?!

So it's been a while, damn, like 3 years since I've posted. Anyways, I'm hoping to update this more on a normal basis with stories, my thoughts and ramblings and other stuff. Not really caring if anyone reads this or not. It's more for me, but if my kids decide one day after I'm dead to learn more about who I am/was there might be something in here for that. 

Nothing Else Matters - Metallica Tattoo

This entry will cover a period of about a year or two and my experience getting my leg sleeve Metallica tattoo. I have been a fan of music my entire for as long as I can remember, but Metallica was the first real band that caught my attention and sucked me in to heavy metal and opened the doors to all the other facets of music I enjoy. The tattoo is really more about how this music turned me on to so much other music and opened those doors. I am not, by any means the biggest Metallica fan out there, and probably will never be. I have friends that know more about the band and their music than I ever will. Anyways, I had already been tattooed once before, my Hope symbol on my right forearm, and I wanted to do something Metallica themed on my leg. I chose my leg, because I could hide it if I wanted to. and I hate the way my legs look anyways so whats' the big deal if I covered one up. So one day at college, Lindsey and I were bored and went to get tattoos. She got a star, and I decided to get "Nothing Else Matters" going down the outside of my right calf. Nothing Else Matters is my favorite Metallica song, and decided to pay tribute with it.

It took a few more months, for me to decide what I was going to do with the rest of my leg, and who I was going to get to do the work. After a lot of thinking, I settled on the first 5 album covers (Kill 'Em All, Ride The Lightning, Master of Puppets, ...And Justice For All & The Black Album) and went to a local tattoo studio near the university to meet my artist. I explained to him that I wanted a part of all of the covers incorporated, and after that it was up to him, I was down for anything he presented. A few weeks later I went back for my first session, not really knowing what to expect, since I had only every gotten small things tattooed before.

This is after the 1st session.

I had could only pay for about 3 hours worth of work every 2 or 3 months so it took some time before it really started coming together. I was a poor college student, working a part time job and had other bills to pay. Plus he was a really good artist which meant he had a really full schedule so it would have taken a while anyways.

This is after the 2nd session.

The pain was tollerable, and I would do it again if I could afford it. Life gets in the way sometimes though. The only times that it became really hard to sit was after we would take breaks. He would work for like 2 hours or so, then take a break. Ususally I would go to the bath room or walk around to get feeling back in my body, but after I would sit back down  the pain was so intense I couldn't wait for him to finish for the day.
Certain areas of my leg hurt more, the fatty upper part of my calf was the absolute worst, but I survived.

 This is after the 3rd session.

After we would finish for the day, I would always go to McDonald's and load up on food and go home and take some Advils for the pain and just crash. I didn't realize it at first, but my artist explained to me that it was because my body was going into shock from all of the pain it had been in.

This is after the 1st Color session. 

After a year and a half of getting inked, we were a few sessions away from completing the work, when I told him that in mid-May I was moving to Florida and we needed to finish this thing as soon as possible. So after some schedule re-arranging we cut a session out and I sat my for my last time the day before we left to move to Florida for 6 hours straight. This was the longest I had ever sat for and I thought I was going to die when I got back to the house. I got my food and took my meds and slept for a while before we finished packing.

This is after my final, 6 hr. session.

I haven't gotten any work done on it since, but would like to. Like I said though, life gets in the way sometimes and there are other more important things in my life now.

Heading South - 2007

In the spring of 2007, my last semester at Toledo, I was faced with the reality that I would be graduating college soon and would have to get a job and enter into the real world. I know that I did, but I don't remember it, but I looked for work in Ohio and didn't really find anything. Lindsey and I had talked a few times about wanting to live down south, in the Carolina's or Georgia so I started looking down there. I found a company in North Carolina and emailed them my resume and while searching their website, I found out they had a sister company in Florida, so I applied there as well. I got a call back from both companies and had phone interviews within a week of each other. About a week after that I got a call back from Florida and they wanted me to talk over the reality of moving to half way around the country at such a young age with my family, and wanted to schedule a time to fly me down for an interview. Florida was definitely not on the top of our list of places to live for a few reasons. Lindsey didn't like the idea that we would be living in a state that was frequented by hurricanes. Neither of us were looking forward to the extreme heat, and I don't think either of us could have ever predicted how hot it would actually be. And finally, the fact that we would be living in a totally new place all by ourselves, 1,500 miles from either of our parents, friends and family.

Well, after talking it over with everyone and realizing that this could be the opportunity of a lifetime to work with such a reputable construction company we decided if the interview went well, and the offer was right, we would be heading south. But first I had to survive my first big-time real world interview.

They set me up with a very early flight from Toledo to Cleveland, then Cleveland to Orlando. Going into it, I was more nervous about the flight down than the actual interview itself. I had only ever flown once, to Orlando, with the family when I was 12, and I figured if they wanted to spend that much money on me, I must have a pretty good shot at it. So I sucked it up and got on the plane(s) and arrived in warm, kind of sunny Orlando, Florida. I went through the whole interview process, meeting with HR people, Division Mangers and other young engineers, and the day was winding down for me to catch a cab back to the airport for my 6 o'clock flight. Well, I didn't know this at the time, but the HR representative was quite talkative and we sat there talking and talking until 3 p.m. when she finally called for my cab. Now in Orlando if there was no traffic, it would only take about 30 minutes to get from the office to the airport, but that's in a perfect situation. By the time my cab arrived it was almost 4 p.m. and it took well over an hour to get to the airport. My cab driver was taking every short cut he could to get me there so I wouldn't miss my flight. Luckily I didn't have anything but a briefcase with me so I ran to security, and ran to the gate. I was the last one on the plane, 5 more minutes and I would have been stuck in Florida. Well I made it home, not even caring about the flights back because it had been such a long day.

About a week later I got an email with an offer letter, and all the other information about becoming a new Construction Engineer at Hubbard Construction Company. After many talks with Lindsey, my parents, her mom, and everyone else, we decided that after graduation we would be heading south to the Sunshine State.

Graduation came and went, I will go into that school year a little more in another entry. Hubbard had given me a moving allowance, so Lindsey and I bought some plane tickets and rented a car to go down and try and look for an apartment and relax 2 days after graduation. We found a few places online and set up appointments to view them, nothing was really catching our eye, but everything that we were looking at was kind of old and not in the best of areas. We found this one apartment complex just driving around and really liked it, and in a move of stupidity we signed up to move in without even doing any research on the place. Once we got back to Ohio, I was checking it out online and began reading horrible things from previous tenants. Luckily we were able to cancel the check we wrote them, and get out of the lease. We ended up going with a nice quite 2 bedroom apartment in Maitland, Florida, just north of Orlando.

Leaving was kind of a bittersweet moment for me. It was hard because all my life I was no more than an hour's drive from my parents and family. Now we would be a 3 hour flight, 18 hour drive, and knowing that we would only be seeing each other a few times a year. But it was also very exciting because it was a new adventure that Lindsey and I were taking on together. Lindsey's mom had been living in Dallas, Texas for about a year or so so there wasn't much of a physical good-bye there, but I know it was rough on my parents and the rest of our families when we left.

Well the day had finally come, the truck was loaded to the brim, and we set off from good ole' Amherst around 11 a.m. We needed help moving down and ended up having our friends David and Emily drive down with us and spend a few days before flying them back to Ohio. Our plan was to drive into North Carolina and stop for the night, then finish up the drive the next day. That didn't happen. Because our truck was loaded, and we were towing Lindsey's car behind it so we were limited to about 60 miles per hour. On top of that, it started raining in Charleston, West Virginia and it was starting to get dark, in the mountains, in the rain. I had driven most of the day because, I am kind of a control freak when it comes to driving. I can't relax when someone else is driving, especially when we were hauling everything we owned. We finally stopped that night, just across the Virginia state line, around midnight. My nerves were completely shot and I was exhausted. Luckily the next day was a beautiful day for driving and the roads got flatter and straighter so I felt a little better about David driving the truck.

This is me nervously driving the truck through the mountains into North Carolina.

After an extremely long day driving, we finally made it into Florida, only 3 hours left until we made it to Orlando. One thing I really hated about Florida was how long it took to get anywhere. We were on the home stretch, however one last problem stood in front of us. Neither of us wrote down the directions to the apartment. We only had directions to Maitland, not the apartment. Fortunately for us, I was able to find it from memory. Unfortunately for Lindsey and Emily, they had driven ahead of us and got of the the highway to try and get to the apartment and get ready for us, but Lindsey got off at the wrong exit and ended up arriving at the apartment about 40 minutes after we did. David and I already had half of the truck unloaded by the time the girls got there.

David, Me, Lindsey & Emily outside our apartment.

After we got somewhat settled in the new place over the next day, we decided to head out to Daytona Beach to hang out for the day before David and Emily went back to Ohio. We got some sun, played some Frisbee for David, and enjoyed the little bit of time we had left with the only friends we had near us. We got up the next morning, took David and Emily to the airport, Lindsey and I went and returned the moving truck and came back to our apartment. I remember that morning being a little sad, depressed even, because it was then that it finally hit me that we were on our own now and it was up to us to go out and meet some new people and places. All my life before that I had my parents or Lindsey or other friends to be my guide, now it was up to me.

Emily, David, Lindsey & Me at  the Daytona Beach Pier.

Lindsey Marie Maines

My first memories of when I met the love of my life date back to my junior year in High School. We actually met the year before, her freshman year my sophomore year, during marching band. My earliest memory, kind of funny, probably not the sweetest one, was on my 16th birthday. I remember she called me to wish me a happy birthday and I had no idea who I was talking to on the phone for a good 30 seconds. I think I had to ask, and even when she said "It's Lindsey", I said "Lindsey who". Romantic I know. But I did end up inviting her to my birthday party later that week. We had our first and only class, outside of band, Chemistry, together the fall semester of my junior year. The class size was uneven and I remember sitting by myself in the back of the room behind Lindsey and her friend Emily. When we had labs in the class, I got to partner up with them. As the class went on, our friendship grew.

It wasn't until around Valentine’s Day, 2001, that I found out, from Emily, that Lindsey liked me. I just so happened that Emily told me during band, and after during lunch, student council was selling flowers for Valentine’s Day. I bought one and gave to to Lindsey and asked her if she wanted to go and see a movie the following weekend. Our first date was on February 17, 2001. It was a Saturday night, and she was staying at her Dad's house that weekend. I remember her giving me his address, and driving over to the house, except that when I arrived on the street, all of the houses in the cul-de-sac didn't have their porch lights on and it was dark out. So here I am pulling in and out of just about every house on the street using my headlights to check the house numbers. It was probably 6 or 7 houses before I noticed that Lindsey had come outside and she what I was doing. After I finally found the house, we headed out to the movie theater in Sheffield Village to see Hannibal. Unfortunately, the theater was packed, and we both decided we didn't want to deal with the huge crowd, and went back to her Dad's to watch a movie instead. We watched The Silence of the Lambs, and part of Road Trip. It got late and I went home, hopeful to see her again soon. I remember I had to work the next day and while at work. I heard through one of the customers, that NASCAR great Dale Earnhardt Sr. had died on the last lap of the Daytona 500. I think hearing that news was the only thing other than Lindsey that ran through my mind all day. After work, I went back over to see her and we finished watching the rest of Road Trip. After the movie, I asked her to be my girlfriend, and we officially began dating.

We spent the next month spending every second we could together at school and every weekend she was over her dad's. Unfortunately, she broke up with me just before our one month anniversary and her 16th birthday. I was bummed, but not totally heartbroken. I guess my subconscious knew she would be back someday. The rest of my junior year we saw each other in passing and while in band. That summer while making my rounds at graduation parties I began hanging out with my ex-girlfriend, also named Linze, whom I had dated the previous winter. Lindsey had also gotten back together with her ex-boyfriend as well.

Once marching band started back up, Lindsey and I found ourselves in similar situations. We both had significant others that were older than us and going away to college in the Fall. We started hanging out during practices and the attraction that started the previous Spring began to redevelop. All of our friends knew we were going to start dating again, most of them, I think even thought we were dating during band camp. We went everywhere together, and were pretty much inseparable. However we still had to end things with our current college girlfriend/boyfriend, and that really didn't happen until well after school had started and it was almost October.

I say October because our anniversary of our first date is October 4, 2001. I still argue with her to this day and probably will forever, that this is just a day that she pulled out of the sky as our anniversary. I say this for a few reasons. If you look back at a calendar for this day, I believe it was a Tuesday. There is no way we went out on a date on a weeknight, because her mom never really let us see each other on school nights, at least when we first started dating. Also, I have a very good memory, thus I am writing these memories down for you all to read. I remember the most random things, dates, events from our relationship so far and I have no recollection of this first date. Either way, October 4, 2001 is our "1st Date" anniversary.

This is a start so far. I will post this and add more later. There is a lot of story to tell…

2003-2004 - Freshman Year at University of Toledo

After high school I didn’t know what I wanted to go to college for, and since Lindsey still had a year left of high school anyways, I did what my parents wanted me to do and went to Lorain County Community College for a year. After Lindsey got accepted to UT I applied and also got accepted, at the time Toledo was pretty easy for just about anyone to get into. Granted my grades from college and high school weren’t bad, but I was not a 3.5 GPA student like she was.
In August of 2003 I packed what I could and loaded it into Mom and Dad’s mini-van with Mom, Dad, my sister Rachel and my friend Ben. Lindsey had already moved in to her dorm a week early because of a special program for certain business students. I was assigned to the Academic House at the University and my roommate was a guy named Sean whom I had never met before that first day. I remember pulling onto the campus that day and it being very busy with all of the new students and their families moving into all of the various dorms. After we parked, we were assisted by some older students that helped us move all of my junk up into my new 12’ x 10’ room that I got to share with my first roommate ever.

After getting all of my stuff sort of unpacked, Lindsey came over, still a little bit hung-over from the night before, and joined us for lunch in the student union. After lunch we took a quick tour of the campus and said our good-byes to my parents. I went back to my room to finish unpacking and Lindz and I would meet up later after all of the new student activities. This is where I made my first contact with Sean. Since we had only spoken through email and Instant Messenger I had no idea what to expect. He was a surfer looking guy from southwest Ohio and was very laid back and easy going. Little did I know at the time it was the weed that made him that way. Sean was a pretty good roommate, we got along great, and his only problem was he was a slob. We quickly determined that the best way to solve this problem was for each of us to keep our messes on our own sides of the room and there wouldn’t be any problems.

I think it was that night or maybe the 2nd night there that Lindsey took me out with some of her new friends she met in her business week. This was the first time that I my first beer. I know mom, you thought I would have lasted longer than a day, but I didn’t. Sorry. See I had never before had an interest to drink alcohol. Only a few of my friends in high school did, and it wasn’t very often at that. Also my dad’s side of the family has had their fair share of alcoholics and I was always told it was wrong. But now that I was at college I figured what the hell, I might as well try it! I remember the experience very well, Lindsey and the guys there were playing a card game called Kings and they were drinking Bud Light. I joined into the game and when it came time for me to take my first drink, I almost spit it back out, I jokingly asked if they had anything that tasted better and they said as a freshman I wasn’t going to get anything that was better than Bud Light. How true of a statement that was, because after we finished the game we all went to a huge house party at one of the fraternities off campus house. This is where I met the Beta’s for the first time. Over the year we went to a few more parties at their house, which was about one strong wind from collapsing in on itself. And in our 3rd year there, they got lost their fraternity charter and were disbanded, a few weeks later someone set that house on fire and it burned almost to the ground.

Dorm life was a totally new experience for me, but it is something I believe that everyone should go through at least once in their life. You get to meet all kinds of people from all over the place, and usually you will walk away with some pretty good stories to tell. For instance, we had a guy on our floor that had the same surfer look to him that Sean had but was way uglier. Everyone called him Smoke-Dog for some reason; I can only imagine it was because he smoked weed and cigarettes like it was going out of style. One night on the first weekend before classes even started, he got so drunk that when he came back to the dorm he opened the door to the garbage room instead of his dorm room and proceeded to climb into a trash can and pass out. He was found about an hour later by dorm security and the next day everyone on the floor had a meeting about not parting too hard just because we were at college now.

Sean was known for not looking the door to our dorm room when he came back at night and then leaving again. I woke up many times to Smoke-Dog tapping me and waking me up asking if I knew where Sean or his cigarettes were. It was terrifying. Later in the year, Smoke-Dog’s roommates were told by his mother that they could shave off his scraggly hair one night after he passed out because his hair was gross. So later that night, they followed her orders and shaved about half of Smoke-Dogs head after he passed out. I did not find out about this until the next morning when I went to take my shower and I saw another guy on the hall walking a teary eyed Smoke into the bathroom to finish the job. Once again later that afternoon we had another hall meeting about not shaving other people’s heads even though their own parents instructed them too.

That fall at UT was probably the hardest and emotionally draining 4 months of my life. Everything started off great, classes weren’t that hard, I had made casual acquaintances on my hall floor, and Lindsey and I were 90 miles away from our parents. After we both got settled into our routines, one of Lindsey’s roommates, Casey, invited Lindsey to join her at one of the sororities rush events. This is what got Lindsey involved with the Alpha Chi Omega chapter at UT. With her being involved in a sorority I figured it would be good for me to get involved with a fraternity and meet some other guys. I knew a little bit about the frats on campus because one of my childhood neighbors, Scott was in Kappa Delta Rho, and had showed me around a few times because he wanted me to join them. I decided along with Sean to rush Phi Kappa Psi, little did I know what I was in for.

The rush events were really cool, there was food, card games, video games and just hanging out with the other brothers. After rush week Sean and I along with about 8 other guys were asked to pledge Phi Psi. For the initiation to pledge we all had to wear shirts and ties and were huddled into a small room in the basement and had to wear our ties as blindfolds while the other brothers got the ceremony together on the first floor. This was not the first time we had to do this. After the ceremony they threw us a big party on the second floor, where there was a bunch of beer and it was a good time.

We had like 8 or 10 weeks of pledging before we could officially become members, and during this time we had to learn all about the fraternity, the brothers and do whatever they said. Most of it wasn’t that bad, we almost always had to do something embarrassing after we interviewed one of the brothers. I think the worst I had to do was clean a brother’s room and go ask a sorority for dish soap so I could wash a brother’s dishes. The worst parts came on Sunday’s when we had our chapter meeting and afterwards our pledge meeting. This always involved a test of some sort about the brothers and the fraternity’s history, and it never failed t hat one of us screwed something up. Because of this, we had to do all different kinds of exercises while they yelled at us. One time, later in the pledge process following the meeting we were immediately locked in the small room with our neck tie blindfolds and had to listen to some bible hour on the radio and could not move or speak to each other. Then after what seemed like an eternity, all of the brothers came downstairs into the basement and grabbed each of us one by one and pulled us out into the middle of them where they shoved a strobe light at us, and as we struggled to see what was going on around us proceeded to shout questions at us that each one of us messed up big time. After we all screwed up that test so bad, they locked us back in the tiny room with the bible hour radio channel for a little while longer.

Around this time we began preparing for Homecoming weekend and started assembling our float for the parade. At one of the parties for homecoming was the first time I was introduced to the Beer Bong. Before I was introduced to this hose with a funnel on it, I had only drunk beer out of a can or cup. Turns out I am pretty good at chugging beers from a beer bong. The actual day of Homecoming began the Friday night before for us pledges. We were supposed to stay up all night and go down and paint the school’s spirit rock with our frat’s colors. Unfortunately for us we stayed up all night to go down there and didn’t realize that ever other fraternity was trying to accomplish the same goal. When we got there, there was another fraternity camped out around the rock and would not let us paint over their colors. So we went back to our dorm rooms to try and catch some sleep before the day started. We had to be back at the frat house early in the morning to clean before the alumni arrived for the parade and football game. Dead tired we cleaned the house and soon thereafter started drinking with the other brothers before the parade. After lunch, the parade started and because the float was only so big, we pledges had to walk the entire parade route which was at least 2 miles. After almost dying from the parade we went back to the house to cookout and tailgate before the football game. Before going to the game I was asked by one of the brothers to chug this drink he had made that he called a Creamsicle, it was orange soda and vanilla vodka. That gave me a good buzz going to the game were I quickly lost it after running into Lindsey. I hadn’t seen her in a day or so because of the Greek activities and I wanted to hang out with her that night at a party, but because her sorority was paired with another frat for Homecoming she went to their party instead. I was super pissed off and ended up leaving the football game early and going back to my dorm.

A few weeks after Homecoming was her sororities date night, this is kind of like a formal party for the sisters and their dates. Their theme for the night was a costume party since it was being held the weekend of Halloween. Lindsey and I decided to go as Fred and Wilma Flintstone and since we weren’t old enough to drink at the event, we had one of her sisters buy us alcohol before the party. I was still pretty new to alcohol so I had her buy me a bottle of Jack Daniels Whiskey; I think Lindsey got a bottle of Orange flavored rum. Since I was so inexperienced to drinking I started taking shot after shot of Jack, chasing it down with Coke, and before I realized it, I had drunk over half the bottle. I didn’t initially remember everything that happened next, but I have been told that on our walk over to her sorority house I walked into a few trees. After getting into the house I blacked out and woke up puking into a trash can surrounded by a 100 different people I didn’t know. Then out of nowhere my roommate Sean and a few of the Phi Psi brothers appeared and took me back to our house to pass out. Lindsey woke me up early that morning and I had no recollection of the last few hours. Keep in mind while this was all going on, I was wearing a Fred Flintstone costume. Lindsey got in big trouble from her sorority, my fraternity brothers laughed at me and I had a hangover for 2 days. I still to this day have a hard time drinking whiskey.

I think I stayed in the fraternity another week or so. At that point it was getting really emotionally difficult for me to stay in, and part of me is glad that I got out when I did. I was also a different person back then as well, I was a lot more shy and reserved than I am today and had a hard time letting loose, and speaking my mind in public. The tasks that we the brothers were having us do was getting more and more ridiculous and all the issues that Lindsey and I were having didn’t help. I remember one day I just walked out the frat house and back to my dorm and told myself “I quit”. Later that night one of the brothers who I was pretty tight with called me and I explained my situation to him and told him I was out and that I was sorry I had wasted there time.

A few years later I ran into a few of the brothers I actually liked at a bar one night and we got to talking about things back when I was in it. Apparently I came through at the worst time possible and that none of the other pledges ended up staying with the frat for longer than a semester. They also said that they really wished I had stayed with them and that I would have been good as a brother. I had a few drinks with them as we talked more and eventually parted ways. I still think about what would have happened if I would have stuck it out and stayed, but I know in my heart, that things would be totally different, and I know that Lindsey and I might not have made it past those first few years.

In the weeks following Halloween things started to go downhill for Lindsey and I. She came over one morning after her classes and said that she thought we should take a break from our relationship for a while because she needed to work some stuff out on her own for a while but that she would come back to me. This completely crushed me because the only real friend I had at UT was Lindsey and now she didn’t want me around. I immediately called my friend Ben and had him come and pick me up so I could get away for the weekend back in Amherst. This was very scary to me because that I always knew that Lindsey and I were supposed to be together and now we weren’t. It didn’t help matters that my friend Matt, who I knew from band in high school and had hung out with a few times that first semester, had told me about him and his high school girlfriend that took a break their first year at UT and never got back together.

I surprised my parents that day when I came home so unexpectedly but they were there to support me and keep me strong for the weekend. I don’t think I have ever been so sad in my life to this point. I remember telling myself that it would be best to not call or email her because talking to her would just make it hurt more than it already did, and if she didn’t come back like she said she would I could move on a little easier. I still ended up talking to her a few times a week for the time that we were apart, but it was still hard. Mom and Dad took me back to school that Sunday and I remember after they left feeling so alone. Even though I tried my hardest, I thought about not being with her, and all these different situations of what I did wrong or what she wanted ran through my head all day and night.

As Thanksgiving approached I was glad to go home and get away for a few days. This was also the weekend that I got my first tattoo. I had always wanted one but never knew what to get or were. So after the whole Lindsey situation I decided on getting the Chinese symbol for Hope on my right forearm. I chose Hope because of one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite movies, The Shawshank Redemption. The quote is “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” I can’t remember why I chose my forearm for my first tattoo since it is a very noticeable location, but I think it was because I wanted to it to be different and not like everyone else. At the time, most guys got their first tattoos on the back of their necks or around their bicep.

After Thanksgiving break I headed back to school to prepare for finals and the end of the semester. I don’t remember exactly when Lindsey and I got back together, but it was sometime in early December. She called me up one night and wanted to come over to my dorm and talk. We talked about what we wanted from our relationship and how the college lifestyle would work around that and decided to continue where we left off before we split.

Finals were quickly approaching and so was a nice long Christmas break. I remember studying for my tests in our floor’s lounge and watching the snow start falling outside over the campus. I ended up having finals all the way through Friday of finals week, which meant that I would be one of the last students in the dorm before break. See, after you were finished with your finals you were free to leave for winter break. My roommate Sean had finals early in the week and so did Lindsey so they both were gone by Wednesday night of that week. It was weird having everything so quiet in the dorm, and I recall being quite bored trying to pass the time until Friday morning. My last test was for a really easy class so there wasn’t too much studying required. I got up that morning, took my test, and went back to the dorm to finish packing before Dad came to get me. As it started snowing on the drive back to Amherst, I remember feeling relieved that I had completed my first semester away from home.

The spring semester seemed to go a little smoother than the fall semester did. I still didn't know what I wanted to study, so I was still taking core classes. They were boring and I don't really remember much about them or even what I took. All I know is that I passed them and moved on to take other meaningleess classes. Socially, there was usually something to do, we would go out to eat, or just hangout around Lindsey's dorm trying to not get caught drinking by the Resident Advisors. We got busted once, while me and Maria(one of Lindz's roomates were playing a lame version flipcup. Not even being loud, or causing any kind of trouble, but the RA that was making their security rounds for the night heard something coming from the room and decided to investigate. We peeped throuh the peephole, and saw who it was and immediately hid the beer and tried to play it cool. Unfortunately the RA didn't believe us and searched the room, found the empty beer cans and half drank case of beer and wrote, Lindsey, Maria and I up. There really was no punishment, I had to talk to my dorms Graduate Assistant(they ran the individual dorms) and I just stuck to my original story that I was just visiting Lindsey and that the beer was from a party that their older roomate had a few nights before. Lindsey and Maria had to attend a dorm sponsered event and ended up getting free food and drinks, non-alcoholic of course.

Spring semester went by, as I said earlier, with less memorable events. I remember as the year was coming to an end, dreading having to clean up our room, and moving out. Sean and I were never the cleanest guys, and we had to move every single piece of furniture out into the hallway a few days before we could really tackle the task of cleaning the room. I remember after we got it all put back together, and still having 2 or 3 days left, praying that Sean didn't mess it up so we would have to re-clean it all again. I do remember that after our finals, we stuck around for another day or so to pack up and hangout one last time before we all moved out. That last night we were there was the series finale of Lindsey's favorite show Friends. So we had to watch the 2 hour special on the history of the show, and then the final episode, and of course, Lindsey cried when it ended. I didn't because even though it was a good show, it wasn't a life ending event and there were plenty of other things on TV. After the show ended, Lindsey's other roomate, Michelle, who we found out in those last few weeks was actually a distant cousin, had her boyfriend at the time go get us some beer for one last time. We drank it, woke up the next morning and my parents arrived with the family van and grandpa's truck to help move Lindsey and I out. We loaded everything up and drove away. Ready for summer and a few months away from all the drama of Toledo. Still looking forward to going back a little older and a little wiser from the experience.