My 33%

Thirty-three years.

Soon as the year ends up, I will sit back and realize that I've been on this spinning globe for thirty-three years. 

 

When I sit back and think about it, it's not that long of a time. Ten years ago, I was just entering my last year at UF. My eyes were full of wonder, optimism  and hope for what my future would held. Twenty years ago, the 90s were well underway and I was an awkward thirteen-year old ready to leave the bastion of safety that was middle school and travel into uncharted territory that was high school. Finally, thirty-years ago, I was a clean blank slate coming into my own. A happy trouble making three year old, playing in the NJ town of Elizabeth, attending a daycare center, without a care in the world. 

The past thirty-three years of my last have taught me a great deal.  Good lessons to live by and to strive to, and some bad ones that I am still paying for. Not once in my thirty-three years of life have I ever wanted a redo, to go back to make things right what once went wrong. Well that last part was more Quantum Leap, but you get the picture. With every year that passes, I do not hear the gears of the hands of time counting down. I hear the beautiful chimes of the grandfather clock, signal another year and another reason to move forward. 

Age thirty-three is going to be a good damn year.

Being an Uncle.

"A new baby is like the beginning of all things - wonder, hope, a dream of possibilities." ~ Eda LeShan

I am an uncle! 
And that's kind of a big deal!

Now I could talk about how this moment in time was so precious to me that time seem to freeze, the air stood still and the crickets stop chirping. Or that when I saw my little nephew who was just trying to adjust to his life on the outside after being paroled from my sister's birth canal. That the first thought running through my head was, "Damn that's one big ass baby!" (side note: He came in at 9pounds 13ounces...as I stated BIG! most def no where near the 14lbs baby that was pushed out earlier this month). 


Now, one assumes when holding a newborn in your arms, looking into those eyes of a new life I would be filled of this...sense to have a little one of my own. Well those warm fuzzy thoughts quickly evaporated as soon as my nephew decided to burp and release his warm fuzzy feeling in his diaper when I first held him. I'm not mad at him, he doesn't know any better. But I will remember this day and make sure he owes me one down the road.


However it does but things in perspective. Basically when we are born, we start off with a blank canvas. We have no morals, no prejudices, no sense of love, no sense of hate. We start off as just an organism that is basically trying to survive and adapt to our surroundings. It's not until you hold another human being in your hand that you realize that you basically have a part (either large or small) in how this kid will turn out to be. I know my sister and her husband are looking at their son with nothing but love in their eye and who can blame...the kid is cute.