What the juice?

I can't post. I may be retarded. In fact, I think I am. I doubt this even publishes, so why am I typing this? I was gonna post 2 more english posts, but it wont work. Sorry guys.

I Take it Back

I was wrong. I guess Loyalty isn't friendship's foundation.

Bulfashion, hast thou forsaken me?

I've shamed the name of Bulfashion tonight.

Frisbee for the second night in a row. Alas...my skillz are steadily declining. Its so depressing to know you can do so much more while you are dropping every throw your way and botching every pass. I know I can do much greater things, but I just can't manage to bring myself to do them anymore.

I'm afraid this lack of skills is due to lack of true spirit. Last night, the first game was great. Spirit bar was pulsing, glowing, and it was through the roof. I was happy every goal, every pass, whether it was on my team or the other. Then some people left, and we made some new teams. From there, each game I play seems to dwindle my skills and spirit meter. I have no unity with my teamates, and I have no desire to spend my energy on a cut I know I could do. I don't have what it takes to catch a disk, and my overzealous search for good Ultimate gloves has hindered my abilty to throw greatly.

I think we are trying to hard. Our posse of Ultimate madness has turned into Unultimate madness. People running --- or rather, standing --- everywhere, tying to understand the sport. Its true, we have a lot of people now, and it has great potential...for a league. But Frisbee Friday isnt the same anymore. Not without the old guys. Not without the regulars. The twins...Thaddeus...people I've grown used to playing the sport with, people that were once the essence of my endless Spirit Meter.

And my socks are wet :(

I don't know what we're gonna do here folks. I'm trying to hard, we are trying to hard collectively, much was accomplished, and terrible things have been brought to pass.

I've shamed the name of Bulfashion tonight.

Bulfashion once gave me power. The greatest night of Frisbee in my memory, built upon the Bulfashion cornerstone. And now. Now...hast thou forsaken me? Where has the unity, the desire gone? I shall lay you to rest, Bulfashion. You shall not see the sport again, until Frisbee is once again Ultimate. Then, my friend, we shall do great things together. Very great things.

High School: the Memory

So, blogger is down for right now, so here I am typing my blog in Notepad until I can copy/paste/post it. Upon reading Thatcher's blog concerning giving up CC for turoring, I started thinking. I'm in the exact same boat. I mean, sure I dont run, but swimming is just as hard if not harder...probably harder actually :P But really, I've been talking to people who could really really use some help with math. Mostly Molly and Katie. I'm sure there are more people out there who could use some help, and wouldn't it be great if I/Chris/we could help them learn it all better? I'm not trying to sound arrogant here, I'm not having any problems with the math (at least for the time being!), and I would really like to help people.

The problem that has faced Chris, is choosing between helping these people and running CC for himself. I guess you could say that I am faced with the same problem, but really, I don't see this as a problem.

Here is where I begin to think independently from Thatcher :P (Independent thought!! Yay!) I say, why not do both. Sure, we are busy. I'm not saying that we have free time on our hands at all. For example, I am in/on:
The Orchestra Pit-- it has VERY hard music, which I must practice for outside of pit practice
which is, for now, Tuesday and Thursday after school for an hour
The Swim Team-- which goes from 2:30 to 4 or 4:30 every day (except for when I have the Orchestra pit after school, in which case I will soon be swimming AFTER pit practice Ultimate Frisbee Presidency-- I will be helping Chris out a lot, along with Nick, whenever we hold meetings, and whenever we are planning for games or practice or whatever.
Early Morning Seminary-- I have to wake up an hour before most of you peoples do and get to school. This means that I must go to bed earlier than most of you (much earlier that you Chris...go to bed, slacker!)

As you can see, I really am busy. I didn't even mention the 3 AP classes I have along with all the homework, or the job that I may be getting in the near future. Granted, for now, I have small amounts of homework from these classes, but towards the end of the year, I will be in a world of hurt with it, I'm sure.

But that's a different story.

The real story now, is why I do these things. You might say, "you are crazy, you fool! You are going to kill yourself with all this junk! Why are you doing this?" Well, as Chris stated that he is doing CC for himself becuase its is something he enjoys, I am doing all these things for my own gain. I am in high school. Thats something that is never going to happen again in my life. Never. I'll never have the opportunity to wake up and go to a place where I have friends and opportunities everywhere I look. I'll never have the chance to swim on a team again in my life. I'll never be able to play in musical again. After graduation, although I don't want it to happen, I will probably never see or hear from 98% of the the people I associate with right now. That includes Chris and James and Levi, who I have known at least half my life. I don't want to never see them again, but thats the way things work with high school.

My dad has made this point to me several times in just the last month. He always recals his high school life. He had a friend who was just like a brother to him. He always thought of him as a brother, never as just a friend. He did everything with him. (His name was Roland by the way, for the sake of my telling this story.) He knew Roland forever. Elementary through high school, they were with each other non-stop, from the time they blew up a giant bridge made out of toothpicks, to the time they welded another schoolmate in a locker at school. They were always there. Roland lived just a street over from my dad's house, and in fact, still does. He lives one street over from where my Grandma lives. Roland bought the house from his parents, and still lives there, and my Grandma still lives there. We visit her a lot. Its only a 15 minute drive to her house. Guess how often my dad talks to Roland now. Quick, guess. Yeah, he talks to him about twice a year. Whever he has been reminiscing old days, and remembers his friend, he calls him up on the phone, and they chat for a while, and then go their separate ways, once again leaving each other behind.

Now, what is my point? The people you are closest to now, now matter what you try and do after high school, are not going to stay in conctact with you, no matter how easy it is for them to do so. You will get busy with other things. You will meet a whole new cluster of people after graduation, whether it be at college, or wherever. You may get married. Most of us will go on missions for the Church. Your future will become more important than your past, and your focuses will be on finding that wife or husband, or fulfilling your Church callings. Your friends now will slip through your memory, and before you know it, you will realize one day that you haven't talked to your "best friend" for a year or more. Sure, that point may be down the road several years. You may try and keep in touch, but, as it is in most cases, you won't ever see that person again in your life.

Now I ask again: What is my point? My point is, dear reader, that you should be making the best of your high school life while you can. Do everything you can do now, do things that are abstract or challenging. Join those teams you half-heartedly want to join. Swim or run in those meets you hate to compete in. I guarantee, one day, you will look back on your high school career, and regret not doing more. You will regret not doing anything and everything you could with the masses of friends you had then. Sure, you will remember the good times you had, and the fun things you did in high school. But you will still regret not going out for the basketball team, or joining the swim or polo or CC team or whatever. You will regret it, because that memory won't be there, when it could have been.

We are making memories here, folks. Our high school experience now is our present. It is our lives right now. But that ends in 2 years, people. After that, high school is a memory. All you take from NOW, from high school, is your manuscript, your college credits you got, you ACT score, and the memories you made. Make it worth while.

Now, back to tutoring people. Thatcher, this post has been written with you in mind, for sure. I
really want to tutor people, just as you do. I want to share my understanding of math with those who need help. The problem still remains though: how do we make time to do it? I am here to say, we must make time for it, if its something that we really want to do.

We've got one shot at making our high school experience what we want it to be. Thatcher, this is my advice to you. You make your high school experience great. You make it great for yourself first, and then you make it as good as you can for others. Selfish? No. You have a life too. I know you love running. Dont give that up if thats what you really like to do. Sure, you might not run after high school. Or maybe you will. Either way, you will never be able to run like you can now with your team. With your friends. I think that takes priority. You cant sacrifice what you love for helping other people. Its a good cause, it really is, to help other people with their homework. But you need to do what you REALLY want to do, cus you've only got one shot at it, and thats now.

We can find ways to work out the tutoring stuff, we can make time for friends. If we can make time for scripture study, then we can make time for studying math. I'm going to work around my busy schedule so that I can help anyone who wants help, and I really think that that is what we should do. Sure, its just one more thing to bog us down, to make us more busy, but its also yet another thing that could make some good memories for us too. Its yet another opportunity that we only have in high school. An opportunity to spend time with people we have known for years, for people that may soon be memories.

So we make time. Put the trivial things on hold, and lets have some meetings. Random meetins, whenever we can, whenever we need to have them. That's when we tutor people. We dont have to do it during CC or Swim or Polo or Frisbee. We do it when we can, we do it when its best for everyone, not just the people who need help.

Well, I hope this has helped. Thatcher, I hope you have read this and have taken it to heart. Molly, Katie, all you who need help with math, I hope you have too. If not...well, who knows if you even read this. You probably don't, cus I don't think I've told you about too much. Either way, I'll have you read it, see what you think.

To the rest of you, comment. Please. Let me know what you think, I would appreciate some input. Thanks a bunch.

English Response: The Crucible

Here we are again at another post, another english response. Methinks these responses will make up the majority of my blog in the near future, so hopefully you like them. If not, tell me so, and I'll see what I can do.

So, in English last time, we began reading The Crucible. He is what I thought of our discussions thereof:

The Crucible

From what I understand, a crucible is something that is used to melt impure metals to remove the unwanted ore. It is heated to great temperatures, and somehow the metals are separated, until you are left with the core of the metal you want. In assuming that Arthur Miller had some sort of knowledge in the matter of crucibles, one can infer that his play, The Crucible, a play written about the Salem Witch Trials, was somehow symbolically tied to a melting pot. We discussed some of the meanings behind this symbolism in class, but I would like to dig a little deeper into these ideas.

In class, the idea that the crucible was symbolic of the purification of people was brought up. We discussed the ways of the Puritans, and compared them to the uses of a crucible. We mentioned that the Puritans were trying to rid all impurities from themselves in very harsh manners. To me, this is a valid comparatively. However, I would like to go a little further with this idea of the “melting pot”.

Through my education, I had heard this term before, but it was not in reference to purification. Rather, it symbolized the various nations of the world coming to America to live. America became a sort of mixing or melting pot in the sense that our culture and diversity was all becoming drawn into one nation. The melting pot, in essence, melted the cultures, races, and traditions of various peoples into one molten lump, which was the population of America.

When comparing these two symbolisms for one item, I noticed how starkly different they were. In one case, the melting pot was used for weeding out unwanted impurities, removing certain undesirable traits. In the other, it was used for the opposite; it was used for the mixing and merging of various “metals” into one solid ore. The different substances became one, forming a united body.

If the two crucibles mentioned previously were both representative of human ambitions, then we can deduce that the driving force, the flame that urged the melting process of the melting pots forward, is not a constant variable. It must be something changing, something complex. I have come to the conclusion that human nature is demanding. When we want something, our instincts are to do whatever we can to achieve that thing. In the case of the Puritans, they wanted to drive the people who thought differently or who were impure from themselves. Their nature scourged and burned away the unwanted substances. In America’s melting pot, diversity was welcome, even promoted. It was a new nation, and we were open to new ideas and customs. All were welcome, and human nature melted the masses together.

In both cases, unity was the goal. In both cases, the flames of human passion drove the operations. And yet, what came out of the melting pots were drastically different. I would like to think that we all have the ability to make good or bad of a situation. We can choose to burn away social impurities and make society one pure body, or we can let those impurities melt into our social pot to form a strong alloy and culture. It really is up to us; we are the driving force in this world, and the way we choose to deal with one another will determine our outcome in the future. Ask yourself: is it more important for us to be pure and shiny, or strong and unrefined?

Yay for the Crucible. Hopefully this post made sense. I didnt proofread it at all, so it may be random and nonsensical, but hey, its the effort that counts, right?

English Response: Martyrdom

For my English class, I am required to write a one page response to something that was discussed in class that day. We are to turn in our typed response the next class period. At this point, I have written four responses. I just finished my fourth one, and I have come to a conclusion: these responses are beginning to define me as a person. I really dig deep when writing these, and I am beginning to understand myself a little better. It is for this reason that I have decided to post my responses whenever I feel that they are worth the public reading. It shall be an ongoing thing, and I hope it brings people some enlightenment and self-relfection.

Here, my dear readers, is my fourth response. Enjoy.

Martyrdom

If somebody asked me what I would be willing to die for, I could answer them in once sentence. That sentence comes from a Savage Garden song, called Affirmation. Ahem… “I believe in love surviving death into eternity.” I believe that if faced with the situation, I would die for anything that I loved enough, both people and ideas. I can say now -- from the safety of my computer chair -- that I would die for something I believe in, because I believe that love really does survive death into eternity. I believe that everything that we have in this life that we truly love will follow us into eternity after we die, especially our family, friends, and faith. I believe that if we are willing to die for something we believe in or something that we love, then we will be rewarded for our actions accordingly.

Dictionary.com defines a ‘martyr’ as, “a person who is put to death or endures great suffering on behalf of any belief, principle, or cause.” In my Church’s history, there have been many martyrs. Our first Latter-Day prophet, Joseph Smith Jr. was a martyr himself. I believe that the many people throughout history who have died for this cause have been rewarded after their death. If I were in same situations as these Latter-Day Saints before me were in, I would be happy to die for my faith in Christ’s Church. My love for my church would survive my death into eternity, and I would be rewarded for my sacrifice. It would be far better for me to accept death for this cause than it would be to denounce my faith and live a full lifetime.

I hope that I would have the courage to actually go through with what I have stated above. I know that it would be a very difficult thing to do, but if I had to die for someone I love, or for my faith, I am sure I would gladly do it. Thank you Savage Garden, for you help with my response!

Region Dance for Life!

Oh my goodness, region dances are insane. w00ber even. My voice is hoarse, my knees hurt, I have blisters on my feet, but it was awesome. I'm not even good at dancing. In fact, Im very repetetive and goofy looking, im sure, but man, its so fun just to get up and move with the beat. The slow songs are way fun too, actually talking to girls that you ahve meant to talk to every day for the last who-knows-how-long, yelling at them, and stooping down so you can hear what they have to say in return. Maybe this will just make it easier to talk to people (aka girls) at school. I dont know why I'm afraid of "people", but thats the way I am. But hey, you think I'm a wuss now, you look at my life as an 8th grader. Or better yet, Elementary School. Then tell me I'm a wuss now. Region dances make life so much easier, and much more grande...yeah, grand with an "e". I said it. Region dances are pro. The only thing that may surpass a region dance in absolute greatness (thats like absolute value, only cooler) is Ultimate. Cus truly, Ultimate is ultimate, and dances are dances. Not Ultimate, but we'll go as far as Uber.

Hmmmmmmm, nothing better than a Region Dance. Good fun for all. Eat more lettuce, and have a nice life.

[f x g](x), not [f o g](x)

So I've discovered that there is a very fine line between understanding math, and pretending to understanding math. Its the difference between a dot and a circle.

I used to think that I was good at math. That was in the days of Mr. Wong. Then I entered the 10th grade, and got Brown for a teacher. Now, those of you who don't know Mrs. Brown, let me put it this way. You are better off for not knowing her. She sucks the intellegence right out of you. I find myself in Pre Calc/Trig, and I pretend to know whats going on, when in reality, I haven't got a clue. Somewhere in my brain, I know how to do a problem. Somehow, I really do understand the math. Yet somehow, things like my title pop up, and I spend 20 minutes factoring a trinomial cubed, when all I had to do was times the two freaking equations together. [f x g](x), not [f o g](x) Helloooo Kyle. Its right there in front of you get a grip.

Now, if it werent for the crowning moment in math that I experience just a few minutes ago, I would have given up math by now. But now, I pulled through. The year wasted with Brown suddenly didnt matter. Somewhere in my mind, I remembered Wong and his glory. I was faced with the problem of solving 2 equations that each had 2 variables. For a brief moment I was confused, but in a flash, I remembered the days in 9th grade where substituting and canceling variables was common. I did it. I solved for x and for y, and I solved the problem. I did it quite effortlessly, and it was grood all around.
I was afraid that coming back into a new year, I had forgotten everything I once knew about math, as well as physics. I had been completely lost with both subjects, but tonight, I found myself again. I did my physics; I understood it. I had help from Thatcher to make sure I was diong it right, but I understand it now. I'm pretty amazed at that fact.

So the moral of hte story is: math and physics is like riding a bike. You might not ride it for ages, but when you get back on...you fall off. Yep, you fall off. I dont care what people say, you dont remember how to do it. You fall right on your butt. You remain on your butt until you suddenly remember Wong and his glory, yes his glory. You remain on your butt until somewhere in your mind, your knowlege finds its way back to you in the form of canceling variables.

So, my messages for you are: 1) dont stop riding your bike. It takes a while to learn how to do it again. 2) Wong really was glorious. That is all.

My angry 1 AM post for the week:

People nowadays make things way too complicated. Chapstick for example: an unnecessary waste of money and time. If your lips or dry, drink some water. And if you do use it, use it every once in a while. Dont eat it. Another one: cell phones. Talk to people face to face at school. If you cant talk to them face to face, then you shouldnt be texting them anyway. They are somewhere else that you shouldnt be concerned with anyway. And if you need to call someone, find a phone in an office somewhere. There is always a phone for your use at the school somewhere. Another useless commodity of today is diet. If you think you are fat, don't complain about it and starve yourself of things you like to eat. Do something about it that will make a differnece in the way you look and feel. Eat the things you like, but eat them with a balance of things that are good for you, and dont eat a ton of that stuff. A little bit will do. Then you just have too get off your chair, and excercise. Real food and sweat. Thats the only real diet.

(As you can tell I'm really tired and irratable right now. Its after 1, and I should be in bed.)

And another thing. Dotn give a crap about whats going on in the life of celebreties. Why know someone's life story, pant size, and marriage situation, when all they do for you is give you a little bit of entertainment on the tv. People worship people like Orlando Bloom...and why? Its cus they think he's hot and because he can act well. Why know everything about that random person of hte least significance to you, when they dont care at all about you? You dont see celebreties watching shows like Extra! and E Entertainment or whatever its called with you as the star of the show. "The top story today is Chris' dire situation as Homecoming approaches. Stay tuned to see what became of this tragic event." No, they dont do that. But people all over the world tune in to the tv to watch a 5th or 18th wedding of some 'hot' celebrity. The wedding is going to last 5 minutes people!!! Dont spend your time watching their freaking billion dollar wedding, that you helped to pay for by going to their movie a dozen times. Seriously people, live your own lives.

Whatever, do what you want. Go buy a 70,000 dollar Hummer. I'll go get a car that gets better gas mileage AND house for that much, sucka-foo. I'll get to wherever you wanna go just as fast.
How do you like them apples? ..........Its bedtime. Forget this happened.

Ole Ole Ole, the New FRISBEE Anthem

So, here I am, Friday night. Still dressed in my gym shorts from today's lunchtime frisbee adventure, all ready to go to Frisbee Friday tonight. I still reek of body odor from lunchtime, but do I care? No. Cus I'm only going to get more sweaty and stinky as the night goes on.

Hooray, pit juice.

Do I'm sitting here, in my shorts and odorous aura, waiting for the moment I can play Frisbee. Guess what I'm listening to right now. Go ahead, guess. Thats right. I'm listening to the Soccer Anthem, teh bestest soul/spirit/stamina booster of all time. It really needs to become the new Frisbee Anthem, cus wow, its so hawt. Thats right, hawt. I'm so pumped. We need to have this blaring at all our Frisbee meetings. Taht would bring the crowds in. Maybe win the support of the Principle too. Cus lets face it, if we are going to play that grand of music at our sporting events, we are going to need a grand stadium and field to match.

To all of you out there lacking in the Spirit of the Game, tell me. I will rip you a CD with that song on there at least 10 times. You will listen to it and be amazed. Your Spirit Bar will be charged; I know mine is through the roof right now.

Anyway, I really need to stop talking about Frisbee. That's all I've posted about in the last who knows how long, and its making me a little crazy. For now, I need to go clean my room, like I said I was going to do hours ago, and then do some other stuff before Frisbee. Here we go, here we go.

What has my life become?

I remember back in the day when I couldn't sleep at night because my mind was running wild with the exciting events of the day. One of the biggest things that ran though my mind was the game Super Smash Brothers on N64. The first day I got that game, I played it for hours with my buddy Rick, and by the time I went to bed, thats all I could think about. I would run various techniques through my mind; how to dodge, when not to jump, best attacks, what to do in certain circumstances. I have played that game so much since then, that I cant even begin to imagine how many total days I have spent just playing that one game.

So it was. A big part of my life was Smash. That is until I found a love for Zelda. It was the same thing with that game, for quite a long time. By ninth grade, the next big thing was Warcraft. (As you can see, I really did grow up with video games. My 4 older sisters and lack of brothers are to blame for that.) I loved the game, and every day of my life held something related to Warcraft in it. Warcraft slowly merged into DotA, which was possibly the biggest reason for lack of sleep in my life. (For all of you out there who are considering taking up DotA, dont do it!) Around the same time, swim begame a big part of my life. I would go to bed just thinking of a perfect breastroke kick. In fact, I would often find myself practicing that stroke as I lay in bed.

And so it was for a long time. The swimming died out fairly quickly once the season ended last year, but the DotA phase didnt end until the middle of this last summer. Christopher and I both vouched not to ever play the game again (or at least a whole lot less than we were).

So at the beginning of this school year, I didn't really have a foundation in any one great thing. I had nothing to mull over in my head while I tried to sleep. I didn't find myself running the various strategies, heros, and items of DotA through my head, or telling myself that I would one day be good at the game by making the best of those things.

And now here I am, telling you about all of this, for what? My post title implies that my life has indeed become something now, but what is it this time? Another video game? Another stroke? No, my friends. This time, its something far more grand. This time, I am kept awake at night to thoughts of something far more useful, healthy, and long-term. Something raging beyond beleif. Something with so much potential, it blows my mind to think of the possabilities. My new love, my new life, has become Ultimate Frisbee.

Thanks to Christopher's generosity, I have been carrying a battered, yet truly ultimate Frisbee with me in my backpack at all times this last week or so. Because of this selfless act of charity, I have been able to throw that Frisbee at every lunch since then. I have tossed it around with numerous friends on even more numerous occasions beyond these lunchtime expeditions. I have found myself wanting it at nearly every moment. I find myself completely awake and happy while holding a Frisbee, and what's more, completely alert and entusiastic when I'm actually throwing and catching it.

My new-found love may seem like an addiction to some. It may seem like Frisbee is beginning to drag me down to the point where nothing else matters. On the contrary: the great feeling Frisbee gives me makes me want to do well in every other aspect of my life. Schoolwork seems more important, chores seem more necessary, and overal, life is a lot more exciting. I am getting in better shape because of the Ultimate sport, I am devoting myself more to something that is worthwhile (unlike mindless video games), and I'm even becoming better friends with many people through the sport.

Now some of you are thinking that Frisbee has become a religion to me, I'm sure. No worries, friends. I'm still Kyle. I still have my own thoughts and beleifs. I'm just diven by something now. This sport is even making me want to be more devoted to my religion as well, giving me something to live on, something to push me along.

Frisbee is all-around Ultimate. There is no denying that fact. Every aspect of it is amazing, and it is my hope that others can find this same joy. This future Frisbee club shall be a great thing for a lot of people, you'll see. Even if its not a success, which I doubt could happen, it shall never be a failure. with the friends we have and with the talent and love they have for it, this sport can't fail. Spirit bar fully charged!

This I Believe

Okay, so in English this last week, my class was given the assignment to write about something that we beleive to be true. We were to expand on our belief with personal experiences. Well, my friends, after workign on this 3 page peice for nearly 4 hours, this is what I have come up with:

Loyalty: Friendship’s Foundation

My friends are awesome. We do all sorts of things together, and we are always there to help each other. We play anything from Ultimate Frisbee to Warcraft together, and we can joke about anything from our body odor to Colin Powell. I have known most of my friends for over half of my life; we have shared many a secret, and prevailed through many adventures. We have stayed up late many times, reminiscing old memories while forging new ones. My friends have had profound impact on my life. I being the only boy in my family, they have been the brothers that I never had.

But it hasn’t all been fun and games. We have gone through many trials and harsh words. Plans of mortal revenge have been on our minds at times, and in many cases, jealousy has been rampant. I have fumed over misdeeds and shed many a tear at the thought of offense. I have tossed and turned through many nights with the memory of our day’s disputes.

So I ask: why is it that we are still friends? How can we still be there for each other when so much strife has come of our relationships? The answer, dear reader, in one word, is loyalty.

My earliest memories with my dearest friends consist of sleepovers full of talk about girls and hours of our favorite video games. We spent those nights in our early Jr. High experience daring each other to ‘like’ a girl, or plotting ways we could get a certain girl to like us in return. When our minds weren’t directed toward the opposite sex, our eyes were fixed on television screens, our hands manipulating the game play with our controllers. We stayed up as long as we were allowed, and stayed awake as long as could beyond that point, once again directing our conversations where we could all relate.

Those were the good old days; the days where girls were our number one topic of discussion, not our number one concern. Those were the days when very little could upset us with one another. Our loyalties lay in our common interests alone. With no memories to bind us, we only had our childish fantasies and games to bring us together.

Those days didn’t last long. Our fantasies slowly became reality, and gradually, our developing friendship reached its first test of endurance; one of us actually got a girlfriend. A relationship kindled with one of us and an outside force, stretching our own bonds. Problems began to arise as our dear friend began drifting away from our circle of friendship toward the influence of another. Our frequent activities with each other became limited when our friend would rather be with ‘Her’ than us at certain times. Of course, it wasn’t his intention to abandon us, but he had new loyalties to attend to, and none of us could accept that, especially me.

Jealousy and anger changed our friendship into a relationship of hate and envy. This struggle lasted quite a while, until dastardly plots and deceit (all on my part) ended my friend’s first relationship with a girl. I had done mean things. I had hurt my friend, and the girl he had liked so much. When all was said and done, it would have made sense for him to never speak with me again, but somehow the opposite happened. We made up with each other, and though our trials, the friendship we had before that trial was strengthened enormously.

I look back on this experience today, and I wonder how we ever managed to forgive and forget such an ordeal. How did we ever look past what we had done to each other? How did we push it all aside and become even closer to one another? The only thing I can figure out is that through all the strife of that tribulation, we still had something. We still had the memories we had made. We still had our common interests. We still had our loyalty. Somehow the respect and the devotion we once had had for each other gave us all we needed to pull through. Our loyalties had been strengthened over the years by all the times we had spent together and memories we shared. In the end, our stronger binds and loyalties could not be hampered.

Since this experience a few years ago, my friends and I have gone through many more trials and times. We have helped each other though countless homework assignments and bad relationships. The loyalties we share are stronger than ever. We have made new friends along the way, many of whom are bound to us in the same way now. Our loyalties to them have been toughened and built up over the years, and the binding foundation of our friendship is ever getting stronger. The more trials we go through and the more memories we make, the deeper our cornerstones are dug, and the higher our walls are built.

Friends help determine the kind of person you will become. They make your memory full. Friendship is built from scratch, and fortified through time by the loyalties that bind us. Loyalty is the difference between a good friendship, and an everlasting one.

This I believe: Friendship built upon a loyal foundation is unbreakable. True friends are family. This I know, for my friends truly are the brothers that I never had.

So, there you have it. My heart-felt-inspirational-whatever-you-want-to-call-it. Hope you enjoyed it.