Memories.

As I watched our cruise ship sail away from the shore in Nassau, my mind began to wander. It meandered down Memory Lane--a street I seldom succumb to. For some reason, I kept thinking about Mark, my Step-Dad. As I watched my friends dance, drinks in hand, to The Electric Slide, Cupid Shuffle, and Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, and my mom do the sprinkler to some 1970s hit that never should have been played on that boat anyway, my thoughts were on him. I miss him. It's rare that--in life--one meets someone so willing to help others, so willing to accept another person's children, so willing to love. Mark was, undoubtedly, the best thing that ever happened to my Mom. Though I am sure that they had their ups and downs, he showed her things that she never had the opportunity to experience before him. He took her places she never knew existed. He handed her the world--silver platter and spoon. And then, he was gone.

100 miles per hour in a Cadillac on a four lane street; one of my students makes me tell him the story. He was driving recklessly down Waters Avenue, and I feel the need to let him know that everything can end if he's not careful. No senior prom. No mother clapping for him as he walks across the stage--graduation--a milestone. No "Daddy, I am happy you're home. Will you play with me?!" It only takes a millisecond for things to change--the clip of a bumper, the depression of brakes, a light turning another color too quickly. He doesn't understand. He is seventeen and invincible. He is living life the way the magazines he reads and the rap songs he has memorized the lyrics to tell him to live--"In the Ferrari or Jaguar/ switchin' four lanes/ With the top down screamin' out/ Money ain't a thang." He thinks--like Lil' Wayne--"I am not a human being." What he doesn't know and/or fails to recognize is that it doesn't take but a second--stealing a glance at a text message your girl sent you, laughing at a joke your friend in the backseat couldn't wait to tell, him thinking it's okay to drive like an asshole on a busy road in a town called Tampa populated by nearly 350,000 people. Which one of those residents will be there when he is carried away in a casket? Who will make the phone call to Emergency Services? What will all of his friends say at school the next day?

He knows better. He says he won't do it again, but he's lying. He is seventeen, carefree, and confident. Nothing will ever happen to him. Right?