A Trip Down Memory Lane

Ah, today was a good day: Father’s Day. To most families this holiday includes getting together, giving their fathers presents, and a time to discuss stories involving father and child. But today, for me anyways, it had a deeper meaning. I suppose this realization started last night when my immediate family went to my dad’s “2nd parents” 50th anniversary celebration. As my dad and one of his oldest friends traded stories, it occurred to me that sometime in the not-so-distant future, I may be able to tell similar stories to my significant other. If you could not tell from my profile, I love the movie “Stand by Me”. In this movie, a father recollects stories from his childhood years later after hearing of a friend’s death. I made this connection between my dad’s stories and the movie today, because after going out to eat at Applebees, we decided that we would go dirtbike riding at the end of Kell Road. Our family has property down there and we hadn’t gone riding in a while, so we decided it would be a good way to wrap up Father’s Day. As we were riding towards Edward’s Point, all these memories started flooding back to me from the time I was between ten to thirteen. Just as in the movie, we “fudged our parents” with false stories, cursed and snuck smokes because we thought it was cool, and witnessed that life was not always fair. But on top of that we had dirtbikes, go-carts, and we never did go look for a dead body. I am nineteen going on twenty and today it seemed impossible that that much time had passed since I first got in trouble for riding on the road, since we thought the coolest thing in the world was to go ride the go-carts and dirtbikes out in the woods without parental supervision, and how small talk was split between “kid things” and noticing how girls were developing. As we left the woods where the trees were being logged, I realized that these experiences that my dad had also experienced are a part of what shaped us to become what we are today. Just like the movie says so well, "For some, it's the last real taste of innocense, and the first taste of life. But for everyone, it's the time that memories are made of."