The Weekend That Was

           “So everyone is coming anyways?”  I questioned enthusiastically.

           “Yep,” Joel replied “there is no way we are gonna let fear keep us from living our lives!”

            I hung up the phone, ecstatic about what the weekend held in store for me, but I was also a little skeptical about going against the advice of everyone’s families. 

The plan was for all seven of my best friends to come visit for the weekend and go to the football game versus USF.  Our plans had been in the works for two months when we realized that all of us were not all going to get be together in the coming two months.  The plan was; for my three friends from USF, as well as the one from Auburn, and one from FSU to all drive down and stay with the three of us that go to UF and spend the weekend together, and of course go to the big game on Saturday.   

To add to the excitement of the weekend, a crazy group of people decided that they wanted to burn a Koran that same day, which as the whole world heard ignited terrorist threats from Muslim Extremists. There was rumor of plans for suicide bombings and airplane hijackings directed at the sleepy little town of Gainesville Florida, and more specifically The Swamp where there was going to be 90,000+ crazy football fans gathered to cheer on the Gators as they took on USF on Saturday.  Because of these threats, my friends and I decided to rethink our weekend reunion plans and almost heeded the advice of our mom’s to stay as far away from Gainesville as possible.  After a couple days of arguing and bickering over whether or not to go on with our plan everyone decided to throw caution by the wayside and come anyways. 

            Everyone arrived Friday afternoon and we hung out, swapping stories for hours and carrying on like the good old days of high school.  We awoke Saturday morning pumped for the game and got right to tailgating, playing corn hole and redneck bowling and of course talking trash about each other’s team.  We then moseyed down to the Swamp for the kickoff of “The Battle of I-75” as the game was dubbed. 

         

   We entered the Swamp right as the game began and the place was electric.  90,000 people decked out in Gator orange and blue screaming their heads off in the sweltering 95-degree Florida heat.  The game started out similar to the previous one though with Pouncey and Brantley not able to complete a snap, and before we knew it USF had marched down the field, 96 yards, and had already taken the lead.  The whole first half was spend with my friends from USF screaming in my ear, play after play after play, about how they were gonna win.  Luckily though in the second half the Gators came roaring back behind some of Jeff Demps’ signature, dynamic runs.  The second half was truly incredible with the gators outscoring the Bulls 31-7.  It was the most fun I had had in 3 years at a Florida game because we played tremendously well and I was celebrating a 38-14 victory with some of my friends, and getting to rub it in the faces of others.  I gloated all the way home and the victory just added to a nearly perfect weekend. 

            The single highlight of the weekend though was the Koran burning being called off.  Obviously this was convenient because it pretty much ended any threats of a terrorist attack occurring, but it also was a huge plus for the world in general.  The cancelling of the burning saved face for the United Sates and more importantly it saved Christians all over the world from being misrepresented by one small church.

            That night we took a trip to CiCi’s where we all stuffed our faces with countless slices of pizza and fat bombs sometimes known as cinnamon rolls.  And finally we capped off our weekend reunion with everyone sleeping on couches and the floor at my place and doing what we like to call “bro-ing out” and catching up on each others lives which is by far my favorite thing to do in life.  I’m lucky to have such great friends and that I got to spend an incredible weekend with all of them.  At the end of the weekend I think we were all glad that we threw caution and fear to the wayside and just lived our lives.

        

            I chose to write this narrative on my reunion with all my best friends because it is the most recent big event in my life.  As someone looks at the pictures at the beginning of this entry they would get the general idea of what my story was saying, but only on a surface level.  I would say that someone looking at my pictures at the beginning of the entry would be able to deduce that I was writing about lots of different experiences with my friends and probably describing all of my different relationships with them. The seemingly random photos from a Florida game, and Koran burning right in the middle of all the other seemingly connected pictures would probably puzzle them.  To prove that people would interpret the pictures like that I asked a friend to look at the pictures and deduce what they meant.  He simply said that I was writing about my best friends, which is true in a sense.  However he did not understand that it was a specific experience with my friends.  He also said that the pictures of The Swamp, and Koran burning seemed to be misfits, but when they read the story it all made sense.

            When placing my photos amidst my narrative I mainly kept them in the same order except for the pictures of the Koran and the game, which I placed to coincide with the story.

            I also added two cheers played by the Gator band to a playlist on my blog in order to add a little more description, particularly to the paragraph about going to the game.