Waiting to Exhale

April’s Fools Day came and went and I was only involved in 3 jokes. The first was using Spirit Post to say Varsity Brands was pulling out of the USASF. It was a short and sweet post that led to a firmly worded email from one of the higher ups at Varsity All Star along with a decent discussion on cheerleading message boards about whether or not Varsity pulling out would be good or bad for the industry. The second and third jokes started shortly after reading the email about the first while eating lunch. The second was a simple attempt to get Kat’s family to believe she just found out she is pregnant, while the third was an attempt to convince a male friend of ours that he got someone pregnant.

Kat’s joke started at lunch by having a friend, also at lunch with us, put a message on her Facebook wall saying how excited she was and hoping it was a girl. About 30 minutes later I posted on Josh’s wall, Kat’s fiance, that I just heard the news and I hope it’s a boy. This didn’t snowball as much as we thought it would, but Josh did get a message or two about it. The third joke took off as expected. It also started at lunch when we decided to ask a girl our friend got to know, in a biblical sense, a few months earlier if she was up for playing a joke on him. She said she was in, but we never gave her full details of what we were going to do, but told her we would send her text messages to send to him throughout the rest of the day. The first message just said she really need to talk to him as soon as possible and it was really important. She also said they had to talk in person. By the end of the day he was convinced she was pregnant and all of their friends knew it, despite us never having her say what she needed to talk to him about. We managed to increase his stress level enough that he was dialing his mom’s number to let her know the news as we told him it was all a joke.

My last judging event of the season was in Destin, FL. Leading up to the event I ate lunch in 5 different states in 5 days. Monday was Jackson, MS, Tuesday in Nashville, TN, Wednesday was Lexington, KY, Thursday in Birmingham, AL, and Friday I was in Destin, FL. The weekend in Destin was great in large part due to having a day with nothing to do on both sides of the competition days. All of the people were great, but Kelly, “Becky”, and “Sparky” led the charge. Kelly started it off by being completely unfiltered. It she thought it, she said it, and it was usually funny. Kelly was the cause of one of the most interesting and entertaining dinners I’ve had in a long time. Becky & Sparky kicked in after the event. What started as a attempt to have a low key night by cooking dinner and hanging out in the condo turned into a bit of craziness thanks to the do whatever the sheet of paper says to do game introduced to us by Becky and Sparky.

For my parting shot I want to remind people to live in the moment and to live in the present. By live in the moment I’m asking you to be involved with the people around you. Don’t sit at dinner with a group of people and do nothing but text the people that aren’t there. Enjoy the time with the people you are with. By live in the present I’m asking you to realize that the past is over. The good and bad of it is something to learn from, but life goes on. Don’t let it pass you by.