reminiscence

the last time i remember hanging out with brandon was driving him to the emergency room after his face had collided with the concrete sidewalk just below the roof he fell from. we were painting a house a light shade of blue. sky blue. his face turned a different shade. navy blue. night blue. bruised and swollen blue.

that was three summers ago. on saturday, i decided do give him a call and give him a vist. brandon is now married, graduated from school, managing a branch of zion's bank, and raising a one year old daughter. he and i used to be living the same life. struggling with relationships, wage labor, homework, studying, church, all the happenings of single, college, happy valley life. now we are living in different worlds. that seems to be the case with pretty much everyone i grew up with.

during highschool, brandon's mom didn't like the group of kids he was hanging with. apparently, they were trouble. we started hanging out and she was delighted. apparently, i was an angel. sure, i didn't drink or do drugs. i didn't steal anything expensive. i didn't graffiti walls or hold-up gas stations. instead of that, we just did what every bored adolescent does. we drove around and threw condiment-spraying firecrackers at unsuspecting victims. we collected and re-dispursed christmas decorations. we occasionally had frequent toilet-papering adventures. we swore, spit, fought, harrassed, and went to church every sunday. we were angels. just angels who got bored and needed a little healthy release from the mundane.

it was fun to sit back and talk about these good ol' days. to laugh about and briefly show glimpses of remorse over the foibles of youth. looking back, we felt a little bad, but not bad enough to feel too embarrassed to share the tales with others. they were our bonding moments.

after graduating our group dispersed and everyone went their seperate ways. several immediately left on missions. a few went to byu. some went to snow. utah. suu. ricks. other places. i stuck in sandy and commuted to uvsc. brandon was a year younger than i, but we shortly parted ways for a while over a girl. i don't even remember her name anymore.

when i got home from my mission, things were already drastically different. i had hopes of regrouping the group, but it was clear that effors would be futile. my folks had moved to a new neighborhood. home was no longer home. some had gotten married. others were already away at school. new lives and friends had been made, old ones set aside and forgotten. things just weren't the same anymore.

jr and i lived together for a while, but then he met rebecca. a week later they had a wedding date set. so typical of this place. they're in tooele raising two daughters. brandon got home from his mission and we hung out quite a bit... until his face met the cement. jenae nursed him back to health, won his heart, and now they're in lehi finishing the basement of their home and teaching their daughter to say her name.

i'm still in happy valley. one year left of school. that's about it. new groups have come and gone - casualites of school, moves, and relationships. i'm sure i'll be here for a while longer, maybe not geographically, but at least demographically. sitting, moving, waiting, learning, trying to understand this life of mine.