ponce de leon and a guy called skud

The first time I went to Disneyworld was when I was in elementary school. My parents took my sister and me out of school for a numbers of days for the road trip, park visits, and additional stops along the way. I don’t remember anything about the trip driving down I-95 southbound for Orlando. But, I do remember going to St. Augustine, Florida to visit the Fountain of Youth. Like all other visitors, we drank with the hopes of staying young.

It seems that in the past several months I have been hoping that this Fountain of Youth thing really works.

I have played golf with my best friend from high school twice this summer. He knows me. He knew me at 12 years old. We lived together during Freshmen year. We did the beach thing as teen-aged boys. We were very good at baseball, fair at football, and pretty much sucked when it came to going along with the crowd. I invited him to youth church camp. He ran over me with a motorcycle. We both played guitar and we finally learned to sing and played simultaneously. I still remember the first song I sang while he played,…the classic rock ballad from Night Ranger called “Goodbye.”

"Yet it's hard/Living life on this memory-go-round/Always up, always down/Turning 'round and 'round and 'round/And all this could be/Just a dream so it seems/I was never much good at goodbye."

The walls of Burkot Hall 114 begged us to stop until our first floor fan club came to offer their own harmony and humor.

On one particular gift-giving occasion, I gave him a Bible. But before giving it to him, I highlighted Philippians 1.3, “I thank my God every time I remember you.” This was sort of a promise I wanted to make to him. And it’s still true. I thank God to have had such a friend. I thank God even more that I still have him as a friend. I thank God because every memory of him makes me feel 13 all over again.

So, in the last weeks, we’ve played golf. We talked. We laughed a lot. And yeah, we cussed a lot too. It’s what we did when we were 13, so it certainly can work when we’re 34.

No one likes to say “goodbye” to their youth. But, life’s not a dream. Life is real. Life is two nostalgic guys in their mid-thirties with beautiful families, large mortgages, and enough memories in the bank to stay young even without Ponce De Leon’s elixir.

Thanks Franki! (by the way, which one of us is "skud" anyway)

where's the emergency exit? we can't take this anymore!

Last week we went on vacation to Orlando. Mostly we stayed by the pool, but a few times we ventured over to Disneyworld. Among the many trips down the waterslide with Bailey and float-side conversations with Kim, I had another memorable experience.

One night we made our way to Magic Kingdom and got there just in time for the nightly Spectromagic parade. The music soared through the air. "On this magic night, a million stars... da da da da..." What made this a neat experience is that 12 1/2 years earlier in just about the same place, I stood with Kim on our honeymoon having just been married a day or so before. Same place. Same music. Same parade. I remember holding her hand then. But, this time I watched the parade holding our daughter's hand. Bailey had her other hand on her mom's shoulder who had sat down on the curb placing her own hands close to our unborn daughter who I imagine felt the rhythm of the parade inside the womb.

It's amazing how fast 12 years can fly by. It's even more amazing how slowly that parade went by. I wish that more often I would take the time to soak in the richness of life's moments.

Whether ironic is the right way to describe what we did next, it was nonetheless, equally enjoyable. After living in the moment, we went to Tomorrowland and experienced the Carousel of Progress. The robot-like host sang, "There's a great big beautiful tomorrow shinin' at the end of ev'ry day. There's a great big beautiful tomorrow and tomorrow's just a dream away." I must say that everyone in the Newell family shared the same opinion. This was the cheesiest thing at Disney. We laughed. We mocked the characters. We sang the song with more than an ounce of sarcasm in our tone. And we laughed some more.

We missed the fireworks because the Carousel of Progress was creeping from the future back to the present. Nonetheless, we held hands while leaving the park walking through thousands of other families and honeymooners. And at least for an hour or so, I think we were the happiest family at Disneyworld.

Given the choice between living in the moment or visiting Tomorrowland, I'm pretty sure I'll go with living in the moments where a family can hold hands and sing of the magic nights and star-filled skies without being rushed into doing whatever comes next.