My Thoughts on Friends and Other Stuff

I Could Not Have Asked for a Better Saturday.

I'm splitting today into two parts: my thoughts on friends, and a football game.

My Thoughts on Friends

I got to spend the day today with my friends.  The day started with my best friends from Spanish Fork: Jake, Kelton, Chris, James, Ethan, and Wes. These guys are the best and most loyal friends anyone could ever ask for.  We went on a little shopping trip to Savers in search of a nice festive sweater.  I found one for 2 dollars which I thought was a complete steal! Granted, it is a woman's sweater but hey, no complaints from this fellow. 

Once we all had our sweaters, another spectacular person in my life, Nicole, came up from Span Fan to take some "Sensual Holiday Pictures".  This is a general idea of what I spent my Saturday doing:

Happy Holidays from Us to You

Some would argue it's a waste of time, I would say that spending time with the people you care most about is the most worthwhile thing you could possibly do.  We had so much fun taking pictures around BYU campus; and I must admit, we looked darn good doing it.

I have always had an interesting view on friendship.  Growing up, friends seems sort of elusive to me and I thought that I'd never have a "Best Friend".  Clear until 7th grade I had a hard time finding friends. I was a very awkward kid growing up. I had strange obsessions (ie. The Price is Right, The Wizard of Oz, etc.) that would be the only thing that mattered in my life at the time.  I was a pretty socially awkward growing up and had a hard time making really good friends.  I met Jake in my 7th grade English class. Me and Jake seem to have too much in common with our personalities, and they constantly bounce off each other almost egging the other person on.  Through him I met Ethan, Chris, and Kelton and we started doing everything together.

My junior year, we separated to different schools; me and Ethan to Maple Mountain High School, Jake, Chris, and Kelton stayed at Spanish Fork High School.  We still did things together, though not nearly as much as before. Our friendship definitely drifted.  By the end of Junior year, the friendship was all but over in my eyes as we all started hanging out with different crowds.  I had found a new group of friends and that was that.  As my Senior year wore on, I started feeling more and more distant from my group. I felt like I didn't belong there; but I kept calling them to hang out, hoping it was just me.  It wasn't me; I did not belong there, and I honestly didn't feel like I was wanted.  Feeling like I didn't really have friends to do anything with anymore, I remembered the fun times I had with Jake and Ethan. I had something of Jake's to return to him which was my excuse to go talk to him.  I had ignored his calls and I honestly didn't deserve his friendship but I went anyways. I spilled my whole story to him (like a girl) and told him how sorry I was for being such a jerk, fully expecting that I was going to have to jump through every flaming hoop at the circus to get his friendship back.  Then he said something I will never forget, 

"Hey buddy, I'm just glad to have you back."

It almost floored me to think that after all of the times I ignored his calls and avoided doing things with those guys, he didn't even care and was simply glad to have his friend back. That moment alone made me realize that I did have best friends all along, I just wasn't looking in the right direction.  I spent my whole summer (ask my parents) doing everything with these guys, from going to midnight movies, to building a fire pit complete with couches and a drink cooler, to nights just sitting around talking. This to me is what friendship is all about. There's a sense of loyalty that defines how much a friendship means to you.  There is no doubt in my mind that your friends have a critical impact on who you become; it's our job to make sure we pick good friends so we can become the best people we can be.

So to Jake, Ethan, Kelton, Chris, Wes, and James: You guys are the best friends I could possibly ask for, thank you for helping make me who I am today.

My Best Friends (from left to right) Jake, Kelton, Chris, myself, Ethan, James, and Wes

A Football Game and a Lucky Sweater

Tonight was BYU's last home game for the season, and my last home game for 2 years. BYU has probably the worst student section in America as it is spread out almost randomly all over the east stands.  My ticket package is "rotated seating" meaning my seats change every week. We never had spectacular seats, but this week we struck gold: North End Zone (The true student section), dead center, 3rd row. It was a cold game with a late kickoff (8:15 in the PM) but it was definitely the best game I've ever been to. Mackenzie, Ethan, Jenny, Alli, and Mike all came and enjoyed the great seats with me, and we all got to enjoy BYU wallop New Mexico State 42-7.

I wore the sweater I bought at Savers to the game because it's really warm and the temperature rose to a balming  30 degrees tonight; I very much appreciated having it.  Every year, BYU sells collectors mugs at the football games and I've bought one for the past 3 years, including this year. Hot chocolate is what I believe to be God's pure love in liquid form. I'm pretty sure I look something like this when I drink it:

But frankly, I don't care because I love it. I had a grand time drinking it, and it kept me pretty warm throughout the game.

BYU probably has the worst fans in America, and I know I'm going to get some flack for saying that but it's true.  Once the game appears to be either a guaranteed win, or a guaranteed loss, or if the game's running late and the fan in question has a Sunday School lesson to prepare, fans begin to exodus out of the stadium midway through the 3rd quarter (This after showing up to the game halfway through the 1st quarter; congrats, you managed to sit through 1 full quarter of football. You sir, are "true blue"). Anyways, this happened today of course which left the sacred front row available to us for the second half, and you better believe I took advantage of it! We spent the rest of the game cheering on the mighty Cougars from the best seats in the house.

What happened next was something I never thought would happen, and I can almost guarantee will never happen again: I caught a t-shirt thrown by a cheerleader.  If I had a bucket list, that was definitely on it.  I made eye contact with the cheerleader and screamed "throw it here" like everyone else was. Either she had a bad throwing arm or found me attractive, but she threw it and lo and behold it was coming straight at me.  This happened to me once before but it rolled off of my hand and into the waiting hands of some other scum bag. I was determined to make sure this one was going to be mine so I stretched out my hands like a pro. Next thing I know-

Congratulations Mr. Sanders: You just caught a handout at a college football game.

Later in the game, the front row was filmed by BYUtv so we did our best to look as dumb as we could for 55 million homes. All in all it was a very fun game and I had a spectacular time! As the game was all but over, I was talking to Mackenzie and telling her about how many good things had happened to me during the game when it dawned on me:

My Sweater is Lucky

AMS