Pre-Mission: College and Miller Apts

I had decided that UVSC was going to be the place for me.  I had earned 12 college credits from high school that BYU would not accept and they would.  I did not know what I wanted to go into yet, so I figured why not figure it out at UVSC, and if I want to transfer to BYU after I get my associates, I could.  Once I went to UVSC I never looked back, I LOVED it there!  Although I say this now, it was a pretty rough first year.

Once again I was leaving all of my friends behind.  And unlike the previous two school switches, I no longer had Jeff, or anyone else by my side.  It was a pretty lonely time of my life, my high school friends were doing their thing and I no longer even had a thing.  I went from knowing everybody, being involved in everything, to being just a student.  I always had done well in school, but I never defined who I was by how I did in class.  My actual schoolwork was always far down the list on what made me me, now it was all I had.

The first week of classes when I introduced myself, yes we had small enough class sizes that we got to know each other and our teachers recognized us, I got to say I am David Horan, I'm 17, living at home, and I don't know what I want my major to be.  Man, why weren't people coming out of the woodwork wanting to be my friend?  I didn't have rehearsals, sports, friends or anything to look forward to at school.  I just got up, went to class, came home, did homework, went to bed.

Now it wasn't actually as bad as I just made it sound.  I still did a lot with my friends, I had weekly activities with my priests quorum, and had a lot of fun wherever I was.  I also didn't just sit in class and ignore everyone, I had several "in class friends". You know, the people you are best friends with, but only in that class.  You would never actually do something with them outside of that setting, but in that class you are like family.

With this rough start to college I could have taken 1 of 2 approaches.  I could either start getting involved, join some music classes, try out for a musical or something either at the school or locally, or I could just try and get done with school as fast as possible.

I briefly looked into classes and they all seemed to be 1 credit and take a lot of time.  I was good at all of that stuff, but I knew I wasn't good enough to make a career in it.  It would purely be for fun, and would keep me going to school longer than needful.  So I took the second approach and got done with as much as possible.  When I left for my mission I had about 40 credits.

I also took 2 institute classes each semester and enjoyed those as well.  I took a world religions class, mission prep, New Testament, and Book of Mormon class.  I also took a mission prep class that my home stake was offering that was also really good.

That next summer I was 18 and would be turning 19 at the end of August.  Then I could leave on my mission, I was very excited.  A month or two before the summer began my stake redid their boundaries.  I got moved from the ward that had every single one of my friends in it.  This had been the only thing that had kept me sane, still having this one connection with them all.  I knew that we could obviously still do a lot together, but I decided it was time to find a way to keep us together.  So 5 of us decided to move to Provo, my other friends had graduated high school now and it sounded like a fun thing to do.

Jared Davis and I were really the only two of the five that really jumped in feet first.  The others, besides Matt, really just seemed to want to have a cool hang out place.  They wanted the best of both worlds, which really isn't possible, you cannot serve two masters, or have two homes.  Eventually most of them were hardly ever around and Jared and I had the place to ourselves.  It was a good learning experience before the mission.  Plus our family and friends were super close if we ever needed anything.

Here I made some really great friends.  When we moved into the ward they thought great, we have some pre-missionaries moving in.  But Jared and I were soon some of the most popular people there.  I went back a few years later and people had said they had heard about us.  One of our claims to fame was car sitting, we would go and sit on the back of my car and talk and people would see us and started talking to us too.

Eventually my car was too popular, so we discovered a new hang out place.  The wall.  It was a place a few blocks away near the duck pond.  Many conversations were had at this spot, exciting, sad, relationship related, funny, you name it, we talked about it.

We became such good friends with the apartment next door that we just named our places Miler 3.5.  There is even a facebook group called Miller Threepointfivia and its Friends.  There are 32 members, although nobody has written on it for 2 years...  They even have a blog, and created a flag.  Yeah, we were that cool.

Some of my favorite memories include playing mafia, staying up until all hours of the night, dance parties, bi-weekly man talk, and being able to take part in our friend Armondo getting baptized.  Brett, Kevin, Filipe, Mina, and many many others, will all be people I hold dear to my heart for as long as I live.  I have only seem each of them a time or two since I got back, but I hope they are doing well.

During this summer Jared and I got our mission calls.  I got called to Seattle, and he got called to Milwaukee.  We both reported to the MTC in October within a week of each other.  Sadly, the summer ended.  It had been one of the best summers of my life, and I have had some great ones.  I was glad that I got involved in the ward, and made the most of my time there.  Life really is what you make of it.  I may have decided to get done with school as fast as possible, but I wasn't ready to give up on enjoying life.  Plus I can't help but make whatever I am doing fun.

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2002: Senior Year

What a great year, senior year, a year so good the entire world came to Utah to enjoy it.  That could have been because the Olympics were here, but I really just think they knew it was the place to be.  I was the king again, I had come a long way the previous year.  I had learned to prioritize a little bit more and put in the groundwork for great things to happen.  All of my friends could now date and I was ready to have a fun and productive year.

I wanted this year to be one that would be remembered for eternity.  So I figured the best way to have that happen would be to get in the yearbook as much as possible.  I was already involved in a million things, so my next move was to try and get into as many club pictures as possible.  The trick was for a club picture to get into the yearbook a teacher had to sponsor that club and verify that those people were in the club.

Somehow... I made it into a lot of clubs.  I missed one though, the one I was "actually" in.  Sorry FFA!  Here are some of the clubs I was a part of.  Drama, Frisbee, Show and Chamber, FBLA, Science Club, Teenage Republicans, Writers Club, PKiA, AGO, Acapella, and Men's Choir.

I actually was in some of these and I did enjoy each of these things.  Some were a bit of a stretch like AGO, which stood for Associated Girls of Orem.  But I liked associating with the girls of Orem, so it seemed to make sense.  The best story was getting in the Teenage Republicans picture.

Being in Utah, there were only 8 people waiting for this picture.  I asked them who was the President of the club to see if I had good enough connections to have them say I was in the club.  Nobody knew, so I convinced everyone into having me be the president.  They all thought that would be a great idea, man who knew politics was so easy.  I then let my friend Jarom be in the club as my first official act of office.

We went up to the stage to get our picture taken and the lady asked who the President of the club was.  They all pointed to me and she asked me if there was anyone here who shouldn't be in the picture.  She warned, that if there were, the picture would not go in the yearbook.  As a true politician it was a risk I was going to take, who cares if people actually in it don't make the yearbook.  Plus I was the President, so I decided every single person there was in the club.  Luckily Mr. Logan, I think he was the teacher over that club, approved the picture and I will go down as the President of the great Orem High Teenage Republicans.

Without soccer to give me my competitive sports fix I played every single intramural sport our school offered.  There were only three though, which included bowling, basketball, and ultimate frisbee.  The Tab Worriors was my bowling team, it included Ryan, Jarom, Keven and I.

We got the Provo Fire Department to sponsor our basketball team, and by sponsor I mean they gave us each a shirt and we put numbers on the back.  Hopefully they never found out how good we were.  That would have to have been the worst team ever.  We were so against fire that we didn't even get hot.  The second to last game of the season put us against another team that had not won.  Here was our chance to at least win 1 game during the season.  We lost by like 20 points...  But don't worry, it's all about having fun, except that was anything but fun.

Ultimate Frisbee was always fun, my group of friends grew up playing this all the time and we were pretty awesome.  I don't remember how we did, because this was kind of the thing at our school and there were a lot of great teams and players.  I would have to put Ultimate Frisbee right up there with Basketball and Soccer as my favorite sports to play.  The yearbook also includes a picture of my bowling team and me playing ultimate.

Dating, I had decided I didn't want to have a girlfriend before my mission, but I went on quite a few dates with a lot of different people.  There were so many amazing, beautiful, and talented girls at Orem High.  I was lucky to call many of them my good friends, so even if I never went on a second date, I could go on a few dates a month and there would still be many I wish I had asked out.

In one of my journals I have written about each of them, but I haven't found that journal yet.  But looking through some of my dance pictures, and by memory, here are a few of the girls I was privileged to take or be taken on dates with this year.  Jenni, Jessie, Annie, Denika, Melinda, Malinda, Laura, Monica, and I know there are a couple of others, sorry if you got forgotten, this was about 10 years ago.

I even was on royalty for one of the dances.  I got the most votes, but they decided that I cheated and awarded me third place.  What happened was they wanted the royalty for this dance not just to be a popularity contest.  So they had people design snowflakes and then people would vote for their favorite.  Mine was awesome!  I told a few people, hey if you like snowflake #27 you should vote for it, then I would give them a little wink.  They had their agency, and really it was an awesome snowflake.  So someone told me that I had got the most votes before the dance started, but they didn't know if they were going to let me win or not.

When I was at the dance I heard them start to announce who had won and I was listening to see if I had gotten first place or if they had decided to disqualify me.  I didn't hear my name, and I didn't care anyway.  The 3 boy and girls winners then were supposed to dance.  A few minutes later one of the student council girls saw me and started to yell at me.  Why didn't you go up when I called your name?  Is third place not good enough for you?  I said, wait, I won?  She said yeah, didn't you hear your name!  I told her that I hadn't, they must have said mine first when I hadn't been paying attention yet.  I wanted to tell her, hey don't yell at me, you are the one that didn't give me first.  So she decided to believe me and she went and found my crown or whatever I got for 3rd place.  I decided to accept it to avoid more yelling and enjoyed the rest of the night.

Another funny thing I did this year.  My good friend Dan Meservy had a Physics class together.  It was the opposite of my Chemistry class sophomore year.  Seems like everybody in there were sophomores and we were the only seniors.  Not only were they sophomores, but they didn't seem too bright.  Dan and I would finish our daily assignment in 5-10 minutes.  Then we would devise plans to get our teacher to let us leave, when most of those didn't work we would make top 10 lists.

Our top 10 girls we liked.  Then when our boredom continued, we started graphing them.  I could tell you what 10 girls I liked over a 3 month period.  My top 5 seemed to stay about the same, while the bottom 5 fluctuated greatly.  Depended who had said hi to me that day or smiled my way.  I am so nerdy sometimes, it's kind of embarrassing, but if you had been in that class you would have been creative in finding things to do too.  Somehow several of other kids in that class failed it and could not finish their assignments each day, I'm so glad I'm smart.  I think I may still have a copy of one of the graphs, I will have to try and look for it later.

This year for choir we went to San Francisco.  We went to Alcatraz, Hard Rock Cafe, The Golden Gate Bridge, and other things I am sure.  My favorite part was Alcatraz, which had held prisoner such people as the Birdman and Al Capone.  One of the workers there let us go to an area that wasn't normally part of the tour.  There we sung one of our songs and it was hauntingly beautiful.  The acoustics were amazing, I wonder what everyone else wandering around the jail were thinking when they heard singing coming from an area that nobody knew about.

Since I had taken after school classes and drivers ed during the summer I had enough credits that I could have skipped my 4th term and still graduated.  Instead of that, my second semester I made a schedule of AP Calculus, 3 choir classes, MDT, seminary, Social Dance, Physics, and maybe another class.

I should have dropped AP Calculus, because I didn't end up taking the AP test for it.  But I don't think there were any more classes I wanted to switch into.  Needless to say it was a very fun half a year.

Besides choir, musicals, clubs, and intramural sports I also found something else to occupy any extra time.  I loved going to the Orem High Football games.  I was friends with all of the cheerleaders and I was basically an unofficial crowd energizer.  My friend Dan and I would often get chants or cheers going ourselves.  During this time I became good friends with Ryan and Chris.  Ryan was the mascot, the Tiger.  He was also a yell-leader.

I began helping him mascot.  It started off helping get the suit on and getting props and prizes ready for him.  Then he let me mascot a part of the game.  Then they needed him to do more to help with stunts and yell-leading.  So I was able to mascot a few games on my own.  It was a ton of fun!  I could have done basketball games too, but that thing was so hot, even with ice packs wrapped around your entire body.  We even went to a few of the JV games and I went to most of the away football games that year.  I even got to ride on the bus with the Cheerleaders and Drill team once to a game, that wasn't bad.

So I guess when I said in the first paragraph of this chapter that I learned to prioritize...  What I meant was I did just about everything still, except for soccer, and was good at a lot of things, but still did not really excel.  Story of my life, Mr. Best All Around.  Which brings me to the musicals for the year.

I was so excited, the first musical of the year was The Music Man.  This had been one of my favorite movies when I was a little kid and I had been in it before at the Scera Shell.  I had been recognized the year before for my singing voice in being in a quarter.  This show also had a quartet, and I thought at the very least I could have that part, which would be way fun.  But I was hoping for something even bigger!  I had put in the time and I did have some talent to back it up.

So when I went to check the list of who made the cuts and what part they were I found mine on dancer...  When we started rehearsing the choreographer said that when she saw me dancing she knew that she had to have me as one of her dancers.  Needless to say I was slightly disappointed, but I guess at least I had stood out as one of the best.  It was a fun show and I enjoyed it, but I had set me sights a little higher.

The next show was called The Boyfriend.  There were on a few leads and it sounded kind of dumb and I was still slightly bitter.  So I decided not to try out for it, I know crazy.  Several people came and tried to convince me to be in it, even after parts had been cast.  But with all the stuff I was doing I didn't want to spend all that time to stand in the background, this was my year to shine!

Later that year our MDT (Music, Dance, Theater) class put on the show Once On This Island.  I was one of the main leads Tonton Julian.  I was the father of the lead Ti Moune, played by Rachel Woodward.  Mama Euralie, my wife, was played by Melinda Lockwood.  It was a lot of fun, we put on just a few performances, but it went so well that they added some additional ones.  This would be my greatest part, and the end of my acting/singing life.  It was a good way to go out, on top.  I miss that part of my life terribly sometimes, but my students don't look at me too weirdly when I break out into song or dance down the hallway...  I just go out and play basketball or soccer with them and they forget.

It was a great year, I had a lot of fun.  I had a lot of friends, I was as involved as much as anyone.  Open up a page of the yearbook and you will see me, and not just because I snuck into an extra picture or two.  I was a true tiger, I was Orem High.  Our school was ghetto, we didn't win the championship in anything, but what made our school great were the people.  People like me, and like the best friends anyone could ever have.  I truly was the King of the World, even if only in my own world.

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Chapter 11: Y2K

Project Me, written as a 16 year old has come to an end, but there is much more that has not been written.  Frankly, it's much more interesting, because it involves dating, college, mission, and becoming a teacher.  It is where I go from man-child to pure man.  Once again this is purely for me, but you are more than welcome to read through it.  At this point I am just trying to get my ideas out and then possibly this summer organizing it all better and making it a little more readable.  For anyone who has actually tried to read all this, I am sure a good chunk of this was not that interesting to you, but I hope in the end my finished product will at least be interesting enough that my family will be able to learn more about me.  So here it goes, my Jr Year at Orem High School.

My Jr. Year of school began with high hopes and dreams.  All of my friends were now at the same school as me.  Not only that, but this year I would be able to drive and date!  It kind of stunk the year before that I wasn't able to date when it felt like the majority of the school could.  So when a week into the school year I had my birthday, I looked around for that lucky girl who would get to be my first date.  Then realized, wait all of my friends are a year younger than me...

It took me a few months before I ended up going on any dates.  Finally, I decided not to wait and realized there were plenty of amazing girls that were 16!  My first date was with Macie, we had been friends for a few years and I doubled with my good friend Raman.  It went well and I decided this dating thing wasn't too bad, so I went on a few more.  I did not date a lot this year, but my group of friends did a ton together.  Occasionally there was some pairing off in the group, but most of the time we just had a lot of fun together.  Plus, I was always told you shouldn't have a girlfriend before your mission, so I never tried to be anything more than friends.

The musicals we put on this year were Pippen and Bye Bye Birdie.  Pippen was an interesting show.  Looking back it was one of my favorites, but at the time I didn't really know what to think about it.  Everyone began the musical all dressed in black, looking the same.  We were able to do crazy face paint or hairstyles, but other than that we were identical.  Then depending on where the story was going you would add to your outfit to become the characters needed.  The main storyline revolved around a young prince in search for the meaning of life, at least that is what my yearbook is telling me.

Bye Bye Birdie was a also a great musical.  I was able to have my biggest part up to this point.  Due to my great singing voice, and my ability to blend well, I was placed in a quartet.  We were able to sing and be in several scenes.  It was nice to continue to earn more recognition and get bigger and better parts.  My Sophomore year they found ways to have me on stage a lot, but now as  Junior, I was now getting to be more of a focus.

This was the first year that I did not play soccer.  I had to make a decision on if I wanted to work really hard and try out for the school team.  Was it going to be my one and only priority or was I going to continue to be involved with everything else I was doing.  I had to let something go, the year before just did not work out.  I had spread myself to thin and did not excel in anything.  Something had to go and this was it.  It was a wise choice, I wasn't that good.  I missed it, but I was still able to play with my friends.

I actually tried to pursue my acting career instead.  Raman and I decided to sign up with an agency.  They tried to get you parts and then took a percentage of whatever you made.  I got calls to be an extra in Touched by an Angel and for a LDS commercial.  Unfortunately they were filming during school, and after my bad grades the year before my mom did not want me to miss school.  After this they stopped calling and I was never able to get my foot into the door of television.  Several of my friends were in commercials, movies and most notably, around here, was Dustin Harding who was cast as Joseph Smith in the Restoration.  I know Rachel Woodward had a few lines in a Disney Channel Movie and Brittany Williams was the star of a church commercial.  There may have been others, but I was never one of them.

For choir tour this year we went to San Diego.  We were able to go to Sea World, the beach, the zoo, and the San Diego Temple, yes we went to the temple.  I forgot to mention that last year when we went to New York it was during the time they were dedicating a temple there. The majority of us went to one of the local churches and watched the dedication.  I am pretty sure not many schools have gone to a temple dedication and to the temple.  We didn't have time to actually do anything, or go in, but it was fun to walk around.

This year I roomed with two of my best friends Raman and Jarom Moore, at least that is what I am guessing.  I couldn't find any photographic evidence of my hotel room and we probably had a fourth person as well.  Raman and Jarom have been two of my best friends since Jr. High.  Somehow they have not made it into this auto-biography much, but they should be.  Raman, Malinda and I called ourselves the 3 otters. 

The only dance I went to this year was Prom.  I took Jessica Bitter.  She was a senior and had been in choir with me the past two years.  We were really good friends and it was a lot of fun.  My group included Raman, K.J., Annie, Jorge, Alene, Jeremy, Erin, and Candie.

Without the help of my journal, I don't remember much more.  This is a very rough draft.

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Chapter 10: Part 2

Chapter 10:  The High School Years
Part 2: Friends and Activities

During the summer before school started I took tap lessons with a bunch of my friends.  It was really fun to do something a little different with my friends.  Plus the first musical that Orem High was doing was supposed to have tap in it, I wanted every advantage I could get.

Also during the summer I was in a show at the Scera Shell Outdoor Theater.  It was called The Music Man, I had always loved this show when I was little and I was excited to be in it.  I was perfectly the wrong age for it.  I was to young to be one of the older teenage boys and a bit to big to be one of the little kids.  But they found plenty of places for me to be in it and things for me to do.  Most of the time during rehearsals I was basically babysitting the kids, but that was more fun than rehearsing anyway.

I got to be with some really cool and talented people.  Sometimes it was nice to be in the middle because I could be in the kid scenes or the older people scenes.  We put the show on for two weeks and had several nights where the audience was into the thousands.    It was a lot of fun.

I did as much as I could with my friends that summer.  I was really busy with The Music Man, and a lot of my friends seemed to be on vacation a lot.  So I didn't get to see everyone, especially one in particular, very often.  My friends did a lot of fun things still, like going to Seven Peaks.  One of my friends had a big pool with a water slide and we went there a few times, that was really awesome.

On July 12th my group of friends decided to have an exciting adventure.  Brandon, Jeff, Shawn, (Jeff and Brandon's cousin), Jessie, Brittany, Annie, Whitney, and I decided to go rollerblading to Zuka Juice.  The girls were really slow rollerbladers, I kind of wanted to stay back with Jessie and the other girls, but I just was getting so bored going that slow.

Shawn and I decided to go on and got way ahead, and I guess Jeff and Jessie were slightly ahead of the others.  Because when we finally all met up we heard the story of what I had missed out on, the true adventure.  Jeff told me that he looked back to see how far ahead they were and saw a big van flying up in the air.  Jessie heard screaming and knew it was Brittany's voice.  They quickly rollerbladed back to see what had happened.  It turned out that the van got hit by another car and sent it flying right into the light pole about 5 feet away from my four friends.  If the pole hadn't been there they could have been seriously hurt.

So the 6 of them ended up getting to Zuka Juice 30 minutes after we did, and they were all in shock.  Shawn and I were really confused, but luckily they were all OK.  We didn't go on any Rollerblade adventures after that, although our group of guys still played a lot of street hockey.

I was still playing soccer this year and things were going great.  We ended the season 8-1, our only loss to the Dominators who had 2 people who used to be on our team, but decided to be traitors and join the dark side.  We started the tournament seeded number one.  We won our first game easily.

Our second game was against the Dominators.  They won 2-1 and one of their goals didn't even go in!  They kicked it from the corner and it went behind the goal and into a hole in the back of the net.  The referee saw the ball in the net and awarded them the goal.  We were pretty mad, luckily it was double elimination.

We won our next game and then we were to the finals.  The team we were facing was none other, the Dominators.  We had one loss and they had zero, so if we wanted to win the tournament we would have to beat them twice in a row and a single loss by us would leave us at second.  The game went into overtime, and eventually into a shoot out.  We won!  Both games had been close so far so we knew the final game was going to be really really good.

In the final game the referees were even worse than the ones who game the Dominators a goal when they didn't make it.  They didn't know how to call offsides!  We play a really good offsides trap and when it doesn't get called it gives the other team a big advantage.  With about 15 minutes left we were down 0-1.  They had a free kick from outside the box and a player on their team shoved our goalie completely out of the goal.  Luckily, our defenders stopped it, but they didn't even call anything.  Then we had the ball we shot it and it went in the goal and then bounced back out.  The referee said that it didn't count, this linesman even said it went in, but the head referee still wouldn't count it.

On the very next play they had someone way offsides, the lineman held up her flag to call it, our whole team was yelling offsides!  Even if they didn't listen to what we said, they should listen to their linesman.  She called a great game, but not once did the referee call anything that she said. 

With 15 minutes left we scored, finally!  Then five minutes later we scored again, within the next 5 minutes we scored two more times.  We won 4-1 and there was nothing that the referee could do to stop us from being number one!

I tried out for the school musical Anything Goes and made it.  I was really excited because I had just gotten out of The Music Man and missed being on the stage.  I really enjoyed it and was paired up with cool people in dances and things.  Then two weeks before opening night I sprained my ankle really bad playing basketball.  I couldn't really rehearse for a few days and for a week I had to just walk where I was supposed to be.  I couldn't really be lifting people or doing any intense choreography.  I was missing important rehearsals and I needed it to get better!

The last week of rehearsals I could walk fine, but it still hurt quite a bit whenever I put real weight on it.  I went full out anyway and figured I could just rest it after the show ended.  That ankle still makes a weird popping sound sometimes and never healed 100%, but life goes on.  No pain, no gain!

The second musical of the year was Pirates of Penzance, it was such a fun show to be in!  I was a pirate and a policeman.  It was kind of interesting, I was trying to kill myself the whole night.  The policemen are only in the show the second half, so to get me more stage time I was a pirate the first half.  I was on stage about 80% of the show, it was great.

For choir we went on tour to New York.  It was a ton of fun!  We left on April 5th and it was so cool flying over Chicago and New York at night because of all the lights.  You would fly over the great lakes and it would be pitch black, then when you hit land again there would be millions of lights!

In my hotel room was Jeff Andersen, Jeff Parker, Steve Seegmiller and I.  I brought my N64 because we only use it during summer and Christmas break, so nobody would miss it.  Jeff brought his CD player and speakers.  So our room was like the mega party room.

April 6th we went to the Statue of Liberty.  Eleven people missed the boat so we had to wait an hour for them to get the next one.  While we waited we played Missionary Tag, there were a lot of girls that played with us and it ended up being one of the most fun things we did that day.  Just being able to play and not having to run around crazy.  It ended up that one of the kids had broken his finger really bad somehow and they were gettint ti fixed and that is why they were late. 

Being in the hotel was great, we could call each others rooms and prank call them or talk all night.  It was a giant party!  A lot of people hung out in our room until it was time for everyone to stay in their own rooms and we had room check.  Then we had to turn back to the phones or just talk amongst ourselves.

On April 7th they dropped everyone off in Central Park and told us to meet back in 5 hours.  The people I was with went to the Empire State Building, then being one of our only chances to ever be in New York we spent a few hours playing Ultimate Frisbee.

April 8th we shopped and bargained at the black market.  Some kids were paying $15 for things that we were getting for $5.  We really had the art of haggling down by the end of our trip.  We would only put $5 in our wallet and keep the rest somewhere else.  Then we would get excited about something open our wallet and say dang I only have $5.  If they wouldn't take it we would walk away, if they wouldn't do it we could always find another seller or come back later and offer $10 or something.

While we were there we went and saw a Broadway show.  I chose to see Footloose, it was pretty cool.  At about 7:30 that night four of us were walking around and this drunk guy came running up to us shouting, "Friends!"  He put out his hand and Jeff Paker went to shake it, but they guy wouldn't let go.  He said, "I thought you were giving it to me, I thought it was mine" that was kind of weird.  Jeff did get his hand back though.  We asked a lady for directions on getting back to Central Park and she told us the wrong way, stupid New York people.  It didn't take us long to see we were going the wrong way though and we got there in plenty of time to spare.

We were really sad that we would have to go home soon.  Oh and while we were there we took part in a choir festival, guess I can't forget that, it's the whole reason we were there.  We won first place, which was really weird.  Those in our room, and I'm sure many others, did not get to bed until about 3 AM.  They woke us up at 6:30 because we had to be at the competition at 7:30 AM!  Since we were from Utah with the time difference that made it feel like 5:30.  I don't know if you have ever tried singing at 5:30 in the morning on 3 hours of sleep, but it's usually not a good plan for great success.  We had no energy and I could barely stand up, let alone sing.  We managed to do all right though, because we took first place.

I had some great experiences and memories that year, but missing the majority of my closest friends and my awful English and Chemistry teachers made me glad the year was over.  That summer I did a lot of things again, but not as much as I would have liked.  It seems like someone was always gone and we never seemed to be home all at the same time.  I still went to Seven Peaks a few times and played basketball a lot.

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