I HAVE RETURNED, MY BRETHEREN
Where have I been, you ask? Why, that's a long story, my friend. A long story involving action, drama, romance, Shrek, keeping my roommates in cages, dank memes, hair dye, and escaping from the Mormons.
So there I was, graduating from high school. As I stood on the stage with my 11 classmates, I remembered a distinct moment with my mother from 5th grade.
(
*FLASHBACK WITHIN A FLASHBACK*
)
I had been drawing pictures of Pokemon and I asked my mom if I could draw some in sharpie on the wall. She told me "No, Bryce. Because someday you'll grow up to be an adult and you won't be into Pokemon anymore, and you'll still be stuck with Pokemon on your wall.
(*return to the present [relevant to the primary flashback, anyway. Technically it's the past now, but less so than 5th grade was.])
So there I stood, graduating at my graduation, having graduated from high school. And beneath my scarlet and golden robes, I bore a well-worn Pikachu t-shirt with a grey background. At that moment, I grinned to myself, because I knew that my mother was wrong. Here I was, an adult, still into Pokemon and all of the other video games from my childhood. I then took a selfie (while graduating on stage) to commemorate the momentous occasion.
(Photo Credit: Myself)
Upon graduating, I then acquired a summer job as a summer camp counselor, of which I spent 4 weeks talking about Minecraft with 3rd and 4th graders and also supervising them sometimes too.
(For real though, it was an awesome job and I learned a lot about myself and gained leadership skills and whatnot.)
It was on the fateful Saturday of July 16 when my life changed forever. That day, my friends, was when an angel visited me.
His name was Shrek.
The oracles
and
had bestowed upon me the grandest of birthday gifts that I had ever received, and Shrek became a part of my family that day.
(Happy Holidays from Shrek <3)
All seemed well in my life, but as Ryan Reynolds puts it as Wade Wilson in Deadpool,
"Life is an endless series of trainwrecks with only brief commercial-like breaks of happiness. This had been the ultimate commercial break. Which meant it was time to return to our regularly scheduled programming."
Luckily, my life is a Disney Channel cartoon, which means it has approximately 80% commercial breaks and 20% actual cartoons,
(Get rekt Disney)
So there had been more happiness than trainwreckyness in general, but it was that August when two of my rats died, leaving Zelda all by herself. I knew it wasn't ideal to have a rat live on it's own, but I didn't do anything at first because I wasn't expecting Zelda to live much longer at all. When I figured out that she wasn't gonna quit at life anytime soon, I made the arrangements at college with the Office of Disability services and Housing to get her registered as a therapy animal so I could take her to my college dorm with me.
It worked, and my life seemed to return to it's jolly old commercial break like usual, but something was missing. One of those things was my roommate who was supposed to show up a month before I did and nobody ever heard from him or was able to contact him again so they just let me have the room to myself and I still have no idea what happened to this day; but the main thing was a friend for Zelda. I needed a rat to be able to carry on Zelda's legacy and continue the tradition of me always owning at least one rat.
(To this day, I have not been without a rat since 6th grade. Fun Fact: Zelda knew my old rat Midna for 2 days before Midna passed away, and Midna knew my other old rat Raichu, (Since they were sisters) and Raichu knew my very first rat Pikachu for a month or so before Pikachu passed away in 2012. So, there are like, connections between each of my rats in terms of knowing all the other rats.)
Anyway, I bought a six-week old rat from a breeder in town, named her Pearl (After Pearl from Steven Universe) and it was then that I had two roommates that were rats. They were pretty chill, never complained about my music or ate my food (very much), but man were they loud at night.
ANYWAY, on with the story, with so many changes going on in my life at once, I knew that the best thing for me at the time was OBVIOUSLY ANOTHER SUDDEN CHANGE!!
(I'm running out of relevant gifs now)
So after seeing Moana and realizing that I should be following my heart and trying new things in life, I decided to get a tattoo!
Then I changed my mind and decided to dye my hair green instead. Close enough, right?
Here's a picture in case anyone's curious what I look like now:
(I'm just like Blazing Powder now)
Now I'm sure you're all still wondering where my daring escape from the Mormons comes into this story, and just like modern Fairly Odd Parents, it doesn't really make sense or fit into the plot at all.
(This story actually comes from yesterday.) So I was planning on visiting my high school (Because I'm still on Winter Break and visit it a lot) and on my way driving there, I felt my phone vibrate so I pulled over to the curb to read the text. (You know, like you're
supposed to. Don't text and drive, kids. Seriously.) Anyway, my windows were down because it felt nice out and I liked the breeze, and suddenly as I'm sitting in my parked car reading the text these two guys come up to my car window and the first thing they say is
"Hello sir, would you like a picture of Jesus Christ?"Anyway, these guys have their arms rested on my window sills, so I can't drive away because A. It would drag them onto the road and B. It would be rude.
Now before I continue, I just wanna say that I'm a Christian and don't intend to mock Christians, Mormons, or any other religion here. This story isn't meant to be a criticism on religion or religious people, just a funny story about two guys with their elbows in my window.
(That's what she said by the way.
Anyway, I happen to be wearing a shirt with Jesus surfing on it, except there's no surfboard cuz he's doing the whole walking on water thing, so my reponse is all
"No thanks, I've already got one heeeeere eeheHUEHUEHEHE"So at this point I'm expecting them to laugh and move on, but nope. They lean further into my car and hold out the book of Mormon towards me and start asking me a bunch of questions about my interest in joining the Mormon religion. At this point, I'm trying not to be rude but I also don't really feel comfortable with these guys getting all up close and personal while I'm in my car, so I tell them that I have someplace to be soon but that I'll look them up later or something. I roll up my windows as they say goodbye to me, and then they just kind of stand there waiting for me to leave. I hadn't gotten a chance to read the text yet, but I drove off to my old high school to read it there so I could be left alone. And that my friends, is how I escaped from the mormons.
(If you're reading this and you were one of those guys, sorry for making fun of you. You gave me a funny story though and were pretty nice, so thanks.)
Where do I go from here? That's a very good question, because with my life, you never really know. One day I'm helping my class study for a Health quiz and the next day I've started a cult. But that's a story for another day...
But hey, that's just a theory
A BRYCE THEORY but not really because it actually happened so it's more of a story THANKS FOR WATCHING
-Bryce