You hear a noise in the back of your head, volume steadily increasing; realizing it’s the alarm clock on your phone, your arm stretches reflexively towards the offending sound.
“Holy crap!” No one’s late to school this day, today is reserved for “Pomp and Circumstance” as you and 599 of your fellow students fill the high school’s football stadium to celebrate completion of the last 4 years of high school.
As Alexa lets loose 80’s metal in the kitchen, you round the corner from the dining room to see your dad put the finishing touches on a stack of pancakes while Sebastian Bach sings about “18 and Life”, and you think, “damn, I’m 18; I’ve got the rest of my life to….”. Then it hits you, sucker punch to the gut, “holy shit, I don’t know what that is.”
You look at your parents bustling around, dad in the kitchen, mom upstairs helping your little sister get ready, your older brother back from college for the summer, just coming in the house after walking the dog.
You feel a palpable energy you know instinctively lead to this day; you feel it like the pressure on a jack in the box lid, right before it busts open.