Piece of Advice

    "Live in the moment." Most of us have all heard that many times before, but how good are we at actually following it?

    This past summer was a summer like no other. We were all locked in our homes quarantining, and while I know many people who didn't follow those rules, I did. I saw my friends twice that entire summer, outside both times, and only after we were allowed to have gatherings with ten people or less involved. My friends and I decided to go meet at Cornell, where all of us went to elementary school, and play basketball. There were only six of us, so we played three on three for about half an hour. The sun beat down on us as it was a hot July day, and pretty soon we needed a break. We sat down in the cool crisp grass and took a moment to catch our breaths. We aren't the smartest of people, I'll be the first to admit that because none of us brought any water. 

    We ended up taking a longer break than expected, just talking. I mean, we were about to be seniors in high school, and here we were, right back at Cornell where it all started. We talked about the moments shared on this playground and blacktop and it felt like my elementary school days were coming back to life. If I looked hard enough on that playground I saw mini-me running around playing tag, or trying to touch the rim on the smallest basketball hoop, I could even hear a teacher yelling at me for climbing up the slide in the back of my mind, but to be fair to me, I was trying to avoid being tagged. After moments of reminiscing, we all got back up to play one more game of tag on that playground. 

     It felt like we had been playing tag for hours, and none of us wanted to stop. We were all exhausted, partly from running and partly from laughing. Our game looked like it was going to be cut short however as one of my friends claimed he felt a raindrop. He was right. Within five minutes the sunny July day turned into what felt like a spring downpour. We were getting soaked to the skin. We called time out on the game and came together under a slide, temporarily shielded from the rain. 

   "Should we stop?" one of my friends asked. We all paused and looked at each other.

   "No!" we exclaimed while running out from underneath the slide, trying to avoid being tagged. We played for about another half hour before calling it a day. At that point, it was getting a little dark, and we needed to get home. On my drive home I thought about all the memories I had in this town, and while I had always been so excited to leave it, I never was thankful for all of the great times I had spent here. It wasn't a perfect night, however, because my mom was not very pleased to see her seventeen-year-old son come home, dripping wet, because of a game of tag.