Haunted House

This past week provided a milestone for myself. I went to my first haunted house. It has been 23 years but I finally did it. I never had gone before before because it never seemed enjoyable for me to spend 20+ bucks for people to jump out at me and possibly touch me. (I'm not the biggest fan of people touching me. My friend Tommy has always been insistent on giving me a back message. He knows I hate it though. I hate being touched, even by my friends.) (Girls can touch me. That's cool.)

Scary movies don't have much of an effect on me. I'm good at convincing myself that it's just a story and that realistically there is nothing to be afraid of. I figured I would apply the same logic to a haunted house; I know the people will be jumping out at me and I know they are hired actors who live a similar life to my own. Perhaps they don't live a similar life because I feel like you might be a weirdo if your preferred type of employment is an environment where blood, gore and strobe lights are on constant display. Going into the haunted house, I never thought I would be scared. I thought I would laugh.

I had a date with me so it added a little pressure to be brave. If I jump in the slightest then it would show a glaring weakness in my man hood.I needed to be on the top of my game.

Waiting in line for the main haunt attraction, we went through some smaller side tents. They were simple but effective and still managed to frighten me. When we got back in line the guy that held our spot said the small tents were lame and not scary and that the main event was much better. I thought great, the small tents scared me and they're supposedly "lame."

Inside the main haunt, I made sure that there was at least one person in front of me at all times. That way they'd take the blunt of the scares. This plan turned out to be super effective. It allowed to be more at ease and prevent me from looking like a scaredy cat.

Raiders game just started so imma wrap this up.

Highlights of the haunted house,
a little girl acted like she was too scared to move on. She was crying saying she was too scared. A dad in our group invited her to join us. Later she was kidnapped by some dude. So she ended up being part of the show.

Another girl asked if i'd be her friend and then warned, "you know what I do to people who aren't my friend, I SET THEM ON FIRE!!!!"

My date paid for my ticket because I don't use venom, so no matter how brave I act I already looked like poop.

My date was pretty so all of the characters chased her with their chainsaws and knives. One guy told her to wait because he had a gift for her and then he came back chasing her with a chainsaw. That was funny.

Anyway, I'm sure my haunted house days are going to be limited from here out. Probably another 23 years or so before I go back.

Coke Assignment

This week in class, our teacher asked us to buy a stranger a coke and then to record on our blogs what our experiences were. I decided it would be most interesting to not explain to the stranger why I was buying them a coke. I was going to refrain from explaining it was an assignment from my mcom teacher. I was simply going to say I was buying them a coke only because I wasted to.

Here's how it went:

I was at 7-11 getting my typical end of the day doughnut. It was around 11 pm so there weren't many others in the store at the time. There was one guy towards the back fridge that was pondering which beverage to purchase. He looked like he was going for an energy drink. I was hesitant. Energy drinks are almost 4 times more expensive than a typical coke. Also, I'm not too accustomed to approaching random dudes in convince stores. I had to work up the courage to go up to him for a considerable time. When I finally did, go up to him, here's how our conversation went:

Me: "Hey man."
Him "Hey."
Me: " Know what you're going to get?"
Him "Yeah I think I'm going to go with the monster…"
Me. "Monster is pretty tight"
Him "yeah I like to drink it."
Me; "Would it be cool if I bought your drink for you?"
Him: "Really? Why?"
Me: "Just cause I want to"
Him: " That's weird."
Me: "I know but I just really want to buy a drink for you. I feel like doing something nice."
HIm "OK. I won't say no to a free drink."

and that's how it went. we never exchanged names, where we are froms or even what we are studyings. We talked for about 67 seconds and ended in me buying his Monster and a casual handshake to end the night.
He was pretty cute though… I should've gotten his number.

homecoming

This past week was homecoming week at BYU. Apparently some special events took place. I don't know the specifics of them because I'm not a typical zoob. I am passionate about the sport teams here at BYU, but I'm no where close to asking a girl to go to a school functioned homecoming dance with me. However, the week did make me ponder my past dance experiences. In high school I loved the school dances. It was a good time with friends and expensive food and expensive clothing. My first homecoming dance was quite the interesting story. Allow me to elaborate.

I was 15. I could say I didn't have a date because my parents forbid me from dating anyone before I was 16 but that's not entirely true. The truth is not too many girls were lining up for a shot at young Daniel. Given these two truths, I just assumed I wouldn't ask anyone to go to the dance and I was cool with that. A girl eventually asked me to go with her because the guy she originally asked had to cancel. (He actually canceled by writing on her Facebook wall. super cold. ) This girl was super nice and even offered to pay for her dinner to entice me to agree to go. Being young and immature, I was more than happy to allow her to pay for herself.

The dance was an extremely awkward affair. The dance was filled with couples intense grinding. I didn't want to grind with my date so I spent most of my time at the water fountain. During one particular slow song (Hero by Enrique Inglesias) My date had her arms around my neck and I could feel her looking up at me searching for a "cute romantic scene in the movie when the couple slow dances and gazes into each others eyes." I was desperate to make eye contact with anyone else in the room so I spent the slow song yelling and interrupting at my friends who were trying to have their own romantic moment.

Disclaimer: Hero is a very special song to me. I don't want to dilute its importance by gazing into the eyes of just anyone when I hear it. It needs to be the right moment.

The night ended and my date and I never talked to each other again. Three more years of high school and still, never talked to each other. My friends tagged me in some photos on Facebook from the event. My mom saw the photos from her Facebook (She forced me to be her friend, if I wasn't her friend I wasn't allowed to have Facebook). My mom saw I had a date, scolded me and grounded me for the next two weekends. Probably why my date and I never made it long term.

Mission Reunions

Mission reunions are the worst.

One of the worst things is the word reunion. It's difficult to spell and for the sake of this blog post, I'll be required to type it many times.

It's conference time which causes quite a large migration into the beehive state from out of staters so they may be able to attend. Given the circumstances, it becomes the ideal time to hold the mission reunion because it provides those from out of Utah the ideal opportunity to see old acquaintances.

It's nice to see people that you share special experiences with, but at the same time many awful things happen. Here's why I don't go:

1) Anyone I want to see from the mission, I see anyway. I don't need a reunion to see these people. This leads to the people at the reunion being the ones I don't want to see.

2) The missionaries that I don't want to see all the sudden want to be friends. I don't want to hold small talk with you. We weren't tight in the mission so there's no need now.

3) Every missionary that you're not tight with comes up to you and has the same conversation.
"Drake! what's happening man?! What are you doing these days? Where are you studying? Are you working? How's the dating life? What?! Not married?! you need to get on with that!"

4) Missionaries only bring their wives or girlfriends to show off. Look how awesome you are! You got married the second you got home! Don't' bring your wife. She didn't serve with us! She doesn't know the sacrifice we had to make! She didn't cry, sweat and bleed with us out in the field.

5) Half the missionaries are married to other missionaries from the mission. This is too common. Especially when its the couple that got married five weeks after the sister got home. Because NO flirting happened at ALL during the mission. It all happened in the five weeks since you've been home.

6) Missionaries are still trying to kiss presidents butt like they're still trying to get promoted to assistant. Unbelievable. This would be why I couldn't be a mission president, because I don't want to care about former missionaries and their recent scripture studies.

I'm listening to A millie by lil wayne as I type this. This track is still fire 10 years later.