3. Melissa Schreyer

Rob,

                     My one and only Busteroo. I don’t think I can even write about all of the wonderful things that you have done for me or about how much I truly care for you. This past year has been an amazing part of my life. In a year you have given me so much. You have given me all the love that any girl could ever possibly need. We have created so many memories together. Taking walks down my road and to the dock, many many thumb-wars, you always winning at bowling, wrestling, car rides, mini-golfing, arguing about my kitty’s name (Queen Raclygoo), countless squeeeeezes, all of our cute little sayings and actions. You are the only one that I could ever imagine doing all of these things with. Everything from the last day of 11th grade and my 17th birthday to all of our happy memories and our arguments and fights have had a positive influence on my life because no matter how good or bad, they have all been with you. You have become the person that I can talk to about everything, the person who has taught me so much, especially about myself. You have taught me how to be me without trying to impress, how to not care what other people think, and how to stand up for myself. And for all of those things I thank you with all of my heart. You are my one and only. You are my first and only love. You are my everything. I cannot thank you enough for giving me your love and your trust. I know that you will succeed in your future with whatever you choose to pursue. I will be there for you to keep pushing you. I truly love you with all of my heart and will always be here for you. I can’t wait to spend forever with you. I know you will continue to fill all of my days with love, and joy, and smiles, and laughter just like you have done for the past year of my life. I love you more than I could ever love another person. I love you Busteroo. Forever and ever.                                               

                                                     I love you alot, alot x infinity

                                                                    Melissa

                                                            (your Bunnyrab)

This is the exact passage written in my yearbook from senior year of high school. Obviously it was written by Melissa. I chose to display this because in a small way, it tells a better story than I ever could. It shows what we went through in small instances, what we overcame, and that true love is findable and worth waiting for.

I will however fill in some blanks that this passage does not.

Melissa and I started dating on June 18th, 2006 during the tail end of our junior year of high school, two days after the first time we hung out. That hangout came on her birthday, June 16th. She was online and we were talking about how her birthday was boring because she was stuck at home and had nothing to do. She suggested that she might go for a car ride somewhere and I immediately asked if I could tag along. She accepted and said she would pick me up at Adam’s Diner and to meet her there. I asked my friend Clayton, whose house I was at, if I could go to do that and he said sure and added that he would tell his parents we were going to walk around outside and he would remain out until I got back so that they wouldn’t know. I then ran from his house to Adam’s Diner, refusing a ride from my friend Jim and his girlfriend Francesca as they pulled over after noticing me running, and was picked up. I still remember my first line after getting in the car “Does this thing have AC?” We drove around aimlessly for awhile, went to CVS to see her friend, then she drove me back home. For a reason unknown to me then and even now, I asked her if I may give her a kiss goodnight, and she accepted. I shut the car door and walked back to Clayton’s yard.

Two days later her and I met up with Jim and Francesca and went to Bull’s Bridge for a swim. It was during that car ride that I asked her out, receiving a response of “sure.” The rest is history.

I am going to cut myself off here because thinking back, the passage above truly does tell our story quite well. No words that I utter can change that for us. I can say though that I am thankful for the following things:

1. I have always said that I will never use the phrase “I love you” without truly feeling that way about a person. Melissa for me became that person. To this day, no one else outside of family members have heard those words uttered from me towards them.

2. I am thankful for the passion that Melissa has shown for our relationship in trying to hold it together. She gave up going away to a different college to stay with me not once, but twice. For this, I am in her debt.

Nothing more need be said.

4. James/Paula Holmes

This ranking is dedicated to and outlines the greatest set of parents that I have ever known, including my biological ones. From the day I met these two individuals, I knew that they were the type of parents I had always envisioned having myself. They were not overly strict and let their son Jim and I have quite a long leash when it came to our horseplay. To this day, I laugh at some of the things they not only let us do, but took part in themselves. 

I met James and Paula officially in the summer of 2003, (unofficially in the spring of that same year when our car parked next to theirs at our 8^th grade graduation and we exchanged “hellos”) when I attended Jim’s birthday party on the 27^th of June. At that time I didn’t know that I would ever develop the relationship with them that I have now or that one day I could openly say that they represented parents to me.

Together, James and Paula are a joy to know, but it is their individual qualities that made me think of things I had never had in my own family life. These feelings and actions came about after I moved into their home during my senior year of high school. It was during this time that I came to really appreciate all that they had done for me.

Paula was the one that conversed with me the most out of the pair. She always kept me updated about what was going on at her workplace or at the house. Whenever the family was going anywhere, including their yearly vacation to Pennsylvania, she always asked me if I wanted to go. When she would do the weekly grocery shopping every Friday, I would bike the 50 minutes or so (twice in pouring rain) just to go shopping with her simply because I felt like it. It was times like these that I felt like a member of their family.

James represented the ideal father to me and one I have and always will compare to my own. I like James, whom I called “Big Jim,” because he didn’t demand that you respect him, he simply respected you and by doing so deserved that respect in return, which I gave him. After I would get home from school and he got home from work, we would frequently go into the basement and work on various things. The major project that we worked on was fixing up what are called “reels.” These are machines that are attached to mowers and allow the grass on golf courses to be cut very small. Every year, a friend of his that did this type of work allowed Big Jim to fix up all of his reels and then paid him for doing so.

I was very accepting when James asked me to help him with this work and he would pay me for doing so. I can remember to this day sitting in the basement after doing a day’s work and waiting for dinner and thinking to myself “I have waited 19 years to do this kind of stuff.” I truly had not had such a bond with a father figure, not even my own, ever.

There was always work to be done around the Holmes residence, whether it was indoors or outdoors. It might have been the dishes needing to be cleaned off and put into the dishwasher or it could have been mowing the lawn. Regardless of the type of work, I enjoyed doing those chores. I never once objected to helping and most of the time I started doing something without ever being asked to. I knew that I was not going to be lazy around the house from the beginning. After all, these two people had welcomed me into their home without demanding a dime and I wanted to show my gratitude by being treated exactly like their own children when it came to chores and work.  I never wanted to be treated special or as an outsider, and I never was.

To this day, I still consider James and Paula to be my parents. It is obvious that they are not this way in a biological sense but when it came to the roles parents play and the support that they provide, they are my parents in every sense of the word. Their home provided the sanctity that I always longed for (proven to be true most notably one spring afternoon when I was around 15 or 16 when my father and I had argued and I walked out of the house, essentially “running away from home,” and walked 2 hours to their house because it seemed like the right place to go) and I am thankful for that. Thinking back, I am not sure there is a way to fully thank the Holmes’ for what they have given me, both in terms of a home and the parental relationship. I can only hope that this piece and the way that I act today are a small testament of their affect on me.

Poll

Dear Readers

I know, I know, I’ve gotten away from the frequent posts of old. Thankfully, I am actually excited to finish the countdown and move on to other pieces I have jammed into a notebook waiting to be posted. Will finish countdown hopefully by next weekend. Thanks.

5. Kayla Sutter

We get to the top five and perhaps the most controversial (to others who know the history) placement on this list. Some people reading this may ask “How can she even be on the list, especially at number five?” Truth be told, her spot on this list is not based on the Kayla Sutter that everyone knows today, but on the Kayla Sutter than I knew for exactly 13 days in my junior year.

I have heard people describe Kayla today as having an attitude and being snotty among other things and I have no comment to those descriptions. The Kayla that I knew was nice in every way and we built a relationship in the days that we were together that I never had in the first 13 days of any other relationship.

It all started by what one would call complete coincidence. That coincidence was being in the same study hall during the 2005-2006 school year. That was my junior year and her freshman year. Kayla was one of the people who liked to go to the library during study hall instead of remaining in the classroom to do her work. Every day the teacher would call those people up to get their hall passes to the library and I would see Kayla walk up and wonder to myself “Who is that?” More often than not, our eyes would meet, as if some hidden voice had told us to look at the other. It was one of those chemistry things people talk about, a weird happening that got me thinking.

Based on these frequent glances, I decided that I would take some action. I was not big on the dating scene, so I didn’t anticipate having much luck with this plan, but I went through with it anyway. I wrote my phone number down on a little piece of paper and at the end of the day I walked the long way to leave school as I always did, knowing that I would see Kayla on my way, another meeting of sorts that we had every day. As she came into view, I got that feeling that some might call “butterflies.” I approached her and not knowing what to say, I just cut to the chase. “Call this” was all that I said. As she exited school she saw my brother and asked him if that was indeed our phone number, which he comfirmed.

Later that night around 4 o’clock p.m. I was sitting in my room doing some homework when the phone rang. I didn’t think much of it, the phone rang all the time. My dad came in and said that it was for me, I expected it to be Jim. As it turns out, it wasn’t Jim at all, it was Kayla. I was astonished to say the least, she had actually called me, someone who she didn’t know.

We got to talking on that Thursday afternoon and discussed the play that was going on at the school that night. She said that she was going with a few of her friends and asked if I wanted to join, an opportunity that I jumped at. We hung up and I was lost for words really. I thought “Wow, not only had she called me, but we would hang out just hours later.” Off to the play it was.

I arrived at the play earlier than Kayla and her friends and waited for them to arrive, which they did some time later. We paid and swapped tickets amongst each other so that Kayla and I could sit next to each other.

While we watched the play, I outstretched my hand in front of Kayla, palm up. I was hoping for a response, and it came. She placed her hand palm down in mine and we held hands for the remainder of the performance and when we left during intermission. I can say that that moment in that relationship was probably the most magical of any.

Me and Kayla officially began dating that night, not by me asking her out, but with that locking of hands. This relationship, if I ever had to describe the “perfect” match, was it. I had gone from locking eyes to passing by in the hallway to giving out my phone number to locking hands in a theatre. I still to this day find it remarkable that without talking more than 20 minutes in our entire lives, we began dating. Things got better when Kayla was switched out of her history class and into my gym class, actually giving us an opportunity during the school day to spend time together.

As with any story, it is appropriate to tell both the beginning and the end. So, even with the negativity of this ending, I will disclose that information too.

In the 13 days that I dated Kayla, I had some of the happiest moments relationship wise that I have ever and probably will ever have. Some say that 13 days isn’t alot of time and I completely agree. I would not say that we were in love, because we weren’t and never used the three letter phrase that so many couples use so early on in relationships, but we were close. For our relationship, the 1st day was the best, the 12th day was the next step, so to speak, and the 13th day was the worst.

The 12th day was when I asked Kayla to the prom, and she accepted. This made me very happy for many reasons, but mainly because it was just another benchmark for us together, a night that we would enjoy. The 13th day marked the end of our relationship in a saddening way for me, a moment in time that I still feel to this day.

My grandmother, out of the generosity that she expresses every day, said that she would pay for my prom and my tux. For this I was very thankful. While on the phone ordering my tux and a corsage for Kayla, I got a call on the other line. I asked the man to hold on a second while I took that call, and he said it was no problem. I answered the other line and it was Kayla. She told me, in no easy way, that this relationship was over. I felt horrible, to say the least. I hung up with her and switched back to the guy and told him “Never mind, my girlfriend just broke up with me” and hung up the phone. Like I said above, this moment in time will always remain with me.

Even though the relationship came to an end on such a note, I wasn’t hateful of Kayla in any way. It did hurt though, alot. The next day in school I sat out gym class and watched, the only time that I have ever sat out in roughly 450 gym classes (took gym 5 times) that I took in high school, so that is saying something. I obviously found it hard to move on.

Some people reading this may think that the solution is easy. They may see the 13 days together and think bad luck, but not me. For me, there is no bad luck. I would have those 13 days back any day to relive and would take 13 days with her over never dating her in the first place any day. Our connection was unlike any other, and with this piece I thank her for ever having dated me in the first place. I am also thankful that my memory is very good, allowing me to recall details about things like this so that I can write about them. I am thankful for being able to have this person be forever a part of my life and I am thankful that I knew Kayla in a way that no one else did.

Softball Team

This is directed at people who live in my hometown of Dover/Wingdale who read this page. I’ve advertised on my Myspace and Facebook pages, just doing the same on here.

This is a message to anyone who chooses to read it. I played in a co-rec softball league last summer and this year, have chosen to co-captain my own team. The hard part of the process now begins, that being the recruitment of players. We are looking for roughly 10-11 players total, with only about 3-4 obtained so far. Please note, only players who are serious about playing will be accepted. We are looking for people who are committed to being present at the games on the time that they are played. The games last year occurred on Tuesdays and Sundays during the summer, with an occasional make-up game on Monday if weather prevented a game on one of the other nights. The fee to play is 50 dollars, so take this into account before contacting me. Play begins June 28th. If anyone is interested, please feel free to contact me via my AIM screen name which is illictantumvos or by email at illictantumvos@aim.com. Thank you.
P.S. This is co-ed, so girls and guys are needed.

-Rob

6. Nick Pfister

Nick and I went to the same high school but never spoke, not even once, throughout those years. It was our choice to both go to Dutchess Community College that created this bond.

Our first talk wasn’t even a conversation. Nick and I passed each other in Washington Hall at Dutchess and he asked me where the Student Services Center was, and I directed him to it. That was all. Contact online and in person when we saw each other at school followed, and this friendship was born.

The best times came when we actually carpooled to school in the Spring of 2008. It was the most basic things that made that semester enjoyable. The car ride to and from school was the highlight. It usually consisted of blasting Kid Rock and making sure to stop at Dunkin’ Donuts for a couple of chocolate donuts.

The significance of Nick’s friendship isn’t an easy one to write about, due to it’s -you have to have been there- type feeling. I do thank him for the rides he provided to school and his generosity when I lacked money for breakfast. It also helps to be one of the close friends I still have contact with to this day, as many on this countdown have faded.

Quick Pause

Just want to insert this quick piece then it’s back to the countdown.

An earlier post I wrote called The Way It Is outlined my stance on people commenting on what I write. I reserved that right for close friends and said that what I published wasn’t up for discussion.

I want to take that post back and say that anyone who wants to comment or give an opinion is 100% able and welcome to. I enjoy others reading my work and thank all who provide the record views I have so far this year (views from this January until today have eclipsed last year’s total already by over 60 views.) It is with this post that I make it clear that anyone who wants to share their comments or insight is welcome to.

-Rob

7. Clay/Karen Brooks

If it had not been for Clay and Karen Brooks, I would never have completed my high school career at Dover High School. They are to thank for allowing me to live a dream of sorts, that being my want to go from kindergarten until graduation day of senior year in the same school district.

During February of my junior year in high school, my parents decided to move from Dover Plains to a nearby town after living in our same house for 13 years. Their reasons for doing so were unclear, but the message conveyed was simple: my brothers, sister, and I would finish the rest of this school year at Dover and then switch to our local school for the next school year. Out of the four of us, I was most adamant on not leaving. Dover school district was responsible for a tremendous amount of happiness in my life. I had forged relationships with people, gotten used to the system, and enjoyed my time there. My parents tried to argue that I would just have to get over it and move on but I spoke out every chance I got. I was not going to switch schools when I had one year remaining until I graduated, and no one could have convinced me otherwise.

As time went on, I began to think of solutions. Simply “just going” was out of the question as the principal had made it very clear that I did not live within the radius required to go to school in Dover. My other option was a long shot, but if it worked, I could finish school in the district. I decided that I would talk to some friends and see if I could live with them and their families. Although this seemed like a good solution, it was not guaranteed to work and I had very few options. Instinctively, I contacted my best friend Jim about the issue. It was only proper to ask his family because I had the best relationship with them. After discussions it was determined that I would not be permitted to live with them. While this hurt, I had to keep trying. This is when Clay and Karen helped out.

I had been going over my friend Clayton’s house for awhile now, starting in my junior year. I found his mom to be extremely nice and his dad was someone to talk to. I had run the idea of living with him by Clayton and we determined that we would ask his parents when the time was right. I wasn’t really in a rush yet, so I agreed. In the mean time, I just spent my time hoping that they allowed me to stay with them. As time went on, and we still waited to ask, it became clear to me that this was probably my last option. If they said “no,” chances are I would have to give up my search.

As it turns out, the time came sooner than we expected. One day while riding home in the car, Clayton and his mom were talking about various things. The conversation shifted to my situation and her asking him if I had found someone to stay with. He told her that I hadn’t and suggested that I stay with them. His mother responded that, while it could work, she would just have to discuss it with her husband. The discussion occurred some time later and in the end I was given my chance. I moved into their home in late August of 2006. I was relieved, to say the least. I now had the chance to finish what I had started at age five.

I give high praise to these two individuals because they, like so many others, knew how passionate I was about not leaving Dover High School. They took the proper steps to make sure that I wouldn’t have to leave the place where all my roots were planted. For this, I am and always will be thankful.

Appologies

My appologies for the hiatus from the site. I had to rethink the top 7 and do some modifying, as some people truly had a greater impact than others, thus moving them up in rank. That being said, time to get back to it.