Memoir
One can try as they please to have a plan for life. More concerned with the future than the present, we meticulously plot and draw a map for our lives and run statistics on one of the most unpredictable scenarios in human history just so that we can find a shelter from fear in gullible certainty. With that being said, in my purest form of youth I would have assured a lot of things for âcertain.â As we all learn at some point in our lives though, some earlier than others, the will of change does not paint in straight lines. In the blank canvas of life, colors may be thrown haphazardly against the white; dripping onto each other, running off the edge of the canvas, and blending into dastardly brown colors. Though one could close their mind to the notion of the canvas and claim the colors to present us with meaningless display, I believe that the colors are not to be fought. To paint the most beautiful life portrait we need to accept the new additions of color in stride, regardless of whether they fit the idea of what we originally were aiming to paint. For myself, I took my first brushstroke at the age of thirteen.
The first great struggle of my life came through finding out who I was and who I wanted to be, and as middle school came and went I came to the swift realization that I in fact did not have the slightest clue who I was. As my friends and I collected new hobbies and interests through middle school, we began to drift further and further apart. Aware of this, I sunk into a depression feeling lost at sea, a single person operating a ship that could not be sailed alone. I spent time investing in my hobbies and likes, but was intimidated to reach my hand out to fellow peers that shared the same interests. Would my old friends resent me? Is there any new friends out there who would accept me? âCertainlyâ my adolescent self thought, âthis would all be resolved in the summer.â And that very summer, my problem was resolved tenfold.
Through my life, my summers have been spent almost entirely at one place alone, Fayson Lakes. Fayson is a small lake community which comes with benefit of a tight-knit, everybody knows everybody warmth. Needless to say, my prior friendship all were a product of the cards that were dealt to me by my community. New faces were never seen except some friendly visits and the occasional memorial day barbeque until one project that changed this course entirely.
Purely by chance, during the 2014 memorial day Fayson Lakes Barbeque I met the newest characters of the next chapter in life. While playing volleyball in the blistering heat with new visitors whom I only knew of through school, I couldnât help but gaze out to water and feel envy at a small group floating on their pontoon blasting music. Under my breath I muttered âI wish I had one of those,â and it was all downhill from there. Eagerly, the school friends that I was playing volleyball with agreed, and through a wavelength that stretched through five minds, Â I knew that we were all thinking the same exact thing. We were going to build a pontoon of our very own.
These strapping lads, Martin, Gannon, Eric, and Tim, later known in following order as Pecan, Chooch, Moody, and Tim (by lack of creativity) would become more than just my friends. They were my partners in crime, my fellow dreamers, and my brothers. They were very different than me in numerous ways, part of this I believe scared me, part is the reason why I liked them so much. We werenât stencils of one another and in a way this is the reason why we got along so well. Where one lacked, the other made up for it. Each as a cog to a well oiled machine we were a fortuitous unit with one goal in sight. To build a pontoon.
In little time a curious companionship turned into spending all free time together. We talked and dreamt of our pontoon, drawing a first blueprint, and a second, and then a third that we were certain of, and finally the fourth and final because as we know, nothing in life is certain. As more time went on, the pontoon became more and more romanticized. No longer was it a floating five by five plank of wood, now our pontoon was so much more. It was our golden maiden of the sea, our gateway to a life of luxury, and of course, a total chick magnet. Two of those things were true. Much deserving of a name, Chooch dubbed our pontoon âJennyâ after weâd spent the night performing terrible impressions of Forrest Gump, and from there it was set in stone.
Entering high school together in the fall we wasted away our lunch periods working on creating our Jenny once we had the logistics figured out we hit the ground running. We totalled the cost of everything that we would need to bring Jenny to life and divided it into five parts. Once said and done, all in all the damage came out to ninety dollars a piece. This was easily more than Iâd ever spent on something ever before, but in the end I knew that it would be worth every penny. Every hour iâd spent mowing the neighbors lawn, mulching everyoneâs house on the west side of town, and drenching myself in sweat in the basement of a local deli had been culminating for this. In our heads ran a motto, you canât take your money with you when youâre dead, might as well use it to live it up on Jenny, and Iâm proud to say that that is exactly what iâve done every summer since.
Nails were broken in our construction period, but the efforts we put in that day brought us closer together, and that very night we christened her introduction to open ocean with a firework show. There are times in life when all of us feel lost. There are times where we wish we could know the future. But through it all we are more similar to one another than we couldâve ever known and the friendship that we created despite the odds against us will last me a lifetime of happy memories and youthful excitement.