A Trip of a Lifetime

Everyone has those days that will continue to leave an imprint on their lives forever. Those days that can be relived just by thinking about them. For me, one of those amazing days took place in the summer leading up to my senior year of high school. My two best friends, Nolan and Jack, and I were beginning a trip that will always be defined as a pivotal moment in my life, from the friendships it solidified to the transition to adulthood we all began to undergo.
At this point in time, we were all seventeen year old kids, without a care in the world in the midst of summer. We were flying to Montana to regroup with the fourth member of our crew who had a summer home up there and was waiting for our arrival. This was the first time that any of us had been given the freedom to fly alone. No one around to monitor us, make sure we got to the gate on time, check our bags for us. The sure fired cockiness we all had at this point led us into the airport and into a world we had never experienced.
Upon entering the Ontario Airport, we glided around with a confidence that was unparalleled. Between the three of us we had been here more times then we could care to count. The noise enveloped us, but we took it in stride, coasting up the escalator out of the ever watchful eye of the parents who had brought us there. We were officially on our own. We shed our excess baggage, including jackets, wallets, phones, and keys and subjected them to the scrutiny of the hawkeyed airport security. Their doubtful glances could not sway the vibrancy we had been endowed with by merely accomplishing a feat such as this on our own merit. We were on top of the world ready to take off. As we passed through unscathed, sliding back into our belongings, including ...

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...iles of our fourth compadre. David ran up to us with our surrogate mother Linda close behind. The concerns we felt all went out the window, we hadn’t seen him in weeks but the moment we were all together again it was as if nothing had changed. We went back to their summer home, and began to unwind. Tired from the long day we had experienced the only thing on our minds was sleep. We split up into our respective sleeping areas and heads slammed into pillows. What happened next will forever define our friendship. We each slowly made our way to each other, one by one we climbed the stairs to the common room. Each new face entering the room verified that even our drained selves wanted nothing more than the company of each other. We stayed up talking through the waning hours of the night, playing board games, recapping our summers, and avoiding the future like the plague.