To My Dear Friend Clayton

Its been two weeks since that passing of one of the best people I have ever met. I have been able to move on quiet a bit since then although I'm not sure if that is the right way to say it. The truth of the matter is I haven't moved on, I just don't cry any more. I still just cant believe he is gone, that said if any one I cared about, supposing you believe in god, was to be taken early it makes sense it was him. He lived more in His 22 years then a lot of adults I know. I have had the opportunity to work in a large variety of jobs. I have worked as a swim instructor, bowling ally mechanic, electrician, door to door sales man, phone sales man, Marine. In all of these jobs I have seen many lost souls. The wandering of people who lacked the direction to pursue what they truly wanted out of life and had settled for what they were currently doing. I have seen men who, though they had a great deal of intelligence and potential, they lived up to only a fraction of it due to cowardice to risk anything. Others, merely lacked the initiative to try. Clayton was the opposite of all these things, He pushed forward into any and all endeavors with the spark of intelligence and dedication that is so visible in anything anyone can remember him doing. A trait He shares with His twin sister. In Shakespeare play about the assassination of Julius Caesar my favorite line of the entire play comes from Caesar himself when he says " cowards die many times before their deaths/ The valiant never taste of death but once." To often it is evident when the loved ones in our lives fall short of their potential is fear to blame. Whether they feared missing out on something fun, moving on, growing up, or just failure it plagues so many people. Clayton never feared anything. 

One of my most vivid memories with Clayton is the time He went to St. George with Wes and I. We went up to Dixie Rock and were doing some bouldering and found a rock face that was particularly sketchy. I wish I could say it was hard to get Clayton to climb it, but it wasn't. All we had to do was offer Him dinner and up He went! He made it to the half way point when a big chunk of rock broke off and He almost fell.  "ooo sketchy." that was all He said and kept climbing. He made it all the way to the top, it was about thirty feet up. The sucky thing was that St. George had recieved a lot of rain the two weeks prior to this and the rock was to soft to support His weight. The ledge He was standing on broke and He fell feet first to the bottom, breaking all the metatarsals in His left foot and the joint in His right ankle, both of which required surgery to repair. The moments directly following the fall were epic. He hit the ground, rolled around of a second and then said "I stuck the landing at least." Then He tried to stand up felt the pain, and the crunching, and realized stuff was messed up. Wes and I had to carry Him out, but after Clayton had to crawl about twenty feat with two broken legs down a slide that three people couldn't fit in. He didn't complain at all. Even when we arrived at the hospital He acted like a champion. When the nurse went to cut off his shoes to take them off He stopped her. "at least let me cut off the laces." He paused and thought about it for a second, Wes and I told Him to let Her and that we would buy Him some new shoes and He refused. He made them loosen the laces and pull the shoes off of His broken feet. I tell this story because it is eidetic to who Clayton is, and was here. He never blamed Wes and I for what happened though it was in a large way our fault for bribing Him to climb. He never complained about what happened. He just took it, made the best of it, and moved on like a boss. 


I have so many other stories like this about Clayton, He was and is amazing and I cant wait to see Him again. I still cant believe He is gone to the point that some times I feel like at any given moment I'm going to wake up from this nightmare and He will be just fine. But the fact of the matter is He isn't, and He is just fine just in a different place. So here is to you dear friend. I love you more then I ever got to tell you because that's not how bro's are, and I miss you more then I ever thought possible!

4 months

I can hardly believe I've been home this long. Life small and large has returned to how it was before I left. I have a new job at a doing the same I was doing before I left just with a different company, and so far Verizon Wireless has treated me very well. Other than that things are pretty much the same. Same gym, same friends, same friends doing the same things. It's interesting to me when you leave a place you love you can be so worried that your missing out on so much when in reality, you didn't miss anything. I love this place. Is it perfect? Not at all, but its home.

Dating is interesting, I genuinely feel the older I get the easier it gets. I suppose I could just be getting better at it, or I am making it less complicated then I used to so it just works better. The girl I am dating now is the closest I have come to a "relationship" in four years. Not out of lack of trying I just have had a really hard time finding a girl I didn't get bored of really quickly. Biggest pet peeves in a girl are as follows. 1. I don't want to hear stories about friends of your friends who i will never meet and do not know. I don't know if that just makes me difficult or what but it drives me nuts. I'd rather hear about your cats if you have any. 2. Girls who feel the need to text me what they ate that day. Not literally mind you, but i'm referring to those relationships where the other person texts you ALLL day EVERRRY day just for the sake of talking. My Grandpa married happily and didn't have a cell phone to talk to the girl He was dating 24-7. He asked my Grandma to marry Him while home on leave from His job as a fighter pilot in the Air Force during the Vietnam war. It went something like this. Grandpa in living room eating pie "Donna, do you want to marry me?" Grandma in kitchen "yeah, i'd like that." BAM!!!!! happiest marriage i've ever seen. 3. This one is kind of shallow but bare with me because it speaks volumes about the "no one should care what any one else does so there is no accountability these days" mentality. When you take them some where in public for a date, or just to go shopping or spend some time with them in a public setting and they come out in sweats. Now this is not to say that I expect a girl to get ready every time I see them. If we are hanging out with close friends, my house, her house, camping what ever go for it grunge it up! But if we are going out get freaking dressed sweet *#&$ @# @* #$@# its annoying. Ok here is the last one 4. These are not pants.

Not pants, not ok.

I had more I was going to write about but I went a little more over the top on the whole pet peeves thing than i expected. So I'll just end with HAPPY SPRING EVERY ONE!!!

a thought

if your reading this stop sucking and go outside moron.

Marine Corps

Suuup. So im lazy and youtube will tell it better. These are videos of the training i have gone throw the last six months as well as my job in the Marine Corps, ENJOY... or I'll kill you.

Boot Camp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfOwmWnzuJI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJoeGvn6MAY&feature=fvst

This last video is what they call Incentive training it was usually longer and worse than this but its the best video i found in my quick thirty second search
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ImRURFiQ-I

Now for my job

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAdg8tD83Hk

And finally a tribute to the marine corps


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESl2MuDChW0&oref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fresults%3Fsearch_query%3Dmarine%2Bcommercial%2Btill%2Bi%2Bcolapse%26oq%3Dmarine%2Bcommercial%2Btill%2Bi%2Bcolapse%26aq%3Df%26aqi%3D%26aql%3D%26gs_sm%3De%26gs_upl%3D5124l11244l0l11349l34l31l1l16l4l0l253l2145l3.8.3l14l0&has_verified=1

Semper Fidelis.