Tag: Looking Back

Wear Sunscreen…

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While cleaning up the mess that Hurricane Abby and Tropical Storm Ellie left in our room, Shaun came across one of my C.D.’s. Buz Luhrman’s Something For Everyone. I haven’t listened to it and years and even contemplated throwing it out but then nostalgia stopped me.

Its hard to say in words what this song really means to me. Back then it meant teachers who watched us grow and develop while we did something we loved so much and leaving us with some advice. It meant a great wide world of the unknown and having to jump into it feet first. It meant having to face the facts that we eventually have to become adults. Now, it means friends who, even though we might spend years apart, are always willing to come together and pick up from where we left off. It means bright futures and growing up and watching as our lives change but amazingly enough, change together. It means taking what seemed to be big accomplishments back then, like getting a driver’s license or finally turning twenty one and trading them in for graduating college, starting a career, getting married and perhaps starting a family. But ultimately it means memories that will never be forgotten or replaced and ones that I will cherish always.

I found the following video on You Tube and it struck a chord with me. While it is not at all the story of my life, its what I visualize when I hear this song. This guy has had one amazing life so far and I am so glad he shared it in pictures and video for the world to see. It also helps that a lot of it is set in some of my favorite places to be. One day I will post the video from 1999, when this song first became so special to me, until then enjoy the video and lyrics below.

Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)
By Baz Luhrman. Original words written by Mary Schmich

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Class of 1999. Wear sunscreen.


If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you’re 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

A Day We Will Never Forget

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In September of 2001 I was a 20 year old student attending San Francisco State University. The fall semester had just begun and I was now sharing an on campus apartment with 3 other girls, one of which would become my best friend. On the night of September 10th, I was working feverishly to complete a 20 page lab report. My biology class was already a challenge and it was already taking a lot of my time. I stayed up until nearly four o’clock in the morning trying to finish that lab report and make it perfect. That was the biggest worry I had in my life, at that point.

In the early hours of the morning of September 11th, my roommate Tommie came flying into our room. I was in a deep sleep when she came in. All I heard her say was “Get up, you have to see this.” I thought that someone had broken into our apartment or something was going on in the courtyard below our apartment. I then heard Tommie’s voice from the living room, “Our country is under attack” At this point I was wishing that our apartment had been broken into.

When I made it out to the living room, what I saw unfolding on our television was surreal. Here I saw the North tower of the World Trade Center on fire, smoke billowing from gaping holes in one of its sides. Then a saw the replay of what had happened. All of us were speechless. From that point on the morning moved in slow motion. We sat there wondering what could have happened and why. Was it an accident or did this happen for a reason? Unfortunately our questions were answered. As we sat there watching live footage, a second airplane came into view and we watched in horror as it slammed into the South Tower.

I remember thinking that this had to be it, who ever planned this had to be finished. We watched in terror as the twin towers of the World Trade Center burned. We watched as survivors at and above the impact zones became desperate to get out of the building that was burning. We watched as people began to jump from windows more then 90 floors up. We watched as the South Tower collapsed, followed by the North Tower only thirty or so minutes later. We sat there hoping that these horrors would end, but it wasn’t over yet. Reports were coming in that another plane had hit the Pentagon, the symbol of our safety and protection. Then reports came in of a plane meant for Washington D.C. crashing in a field in Pennsylvania. It felt like it was never going to stop.

By 9am the carnage of the day had completely unfolded. We sat glued to our TV in the living room. For days our TV remained fixed on the news and footage. We prayed and hoped that people would find their loved ones, that a miracle would occur and the loss of life would ne minimal.

However, in all of the grief, anguish and disbelief something beautiful happened. People came together. It did not matter if you were black, white, Hispanic or any other ethnicity or race. It did not matter if you were Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, or Buddhist. It did not matter if you were Democrat, Republican or could care less about politics. People came together to help one another out, whether it was to help pull people from the rubble and allowing people into their homes who needed a place to stay while they looked for loved ones to donating blood or volunteering with Red Cross. People put their differences aside and banned together to show those who tried to hurt us that even in the darkest of times we will continue on and we will not turn on one another. In such ugliness there was beauty.

Ten years later I am now married to a man I love with all of my heart and soul. We have two beautiful girls, who I would do anything for. My life has changed a lot since then and all for the better. I now look back at September 11th, 2001 through the eyes of a mother and a wife, as someone who spends every day doing things for someone other then herself. My world involves more then just me, my friends, college and finding a part time job. I look at all of the children who lost mothers and fathers that day as well as the parents who lost sons and daughters and it makes my heart ache in a way that I couldn’t have understood ten years ago.

Today my thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends who lost those closest to them on such a dark day in our short history. The nearly three thousand souls that were lost that day cannot be replaced but they will never be forgotten. I hope to one day take our children to New York City and show them the World Trade Center Memorial. I want them to see what once stood there and understand what happened that day, but to also see the resolve and the perseverance of the American people. As long as we never forget but we keep on moving, those who try to hurt this great nation will never win.