Cheers to the guy that taught me to be a kid!

Number three of the day, I'm on fire! You should see my journal after today, its deep... ANYway...

This is an homage to the guy that taught me to be a kid. Waaaay back in the day, when I was 14 and sure that the world was going to swallow me whole. I met a guy by the name of Eric Gonzalez. He has recieved kudos and thanks on this site in the past but today is his birthday and I feel like its only right to honor him.

Where was I, oh yes, I was 14. I was the kid from the proverbial "wrong side of the tracks" and quite literally crossed tracks to get to school each morning. I would sit in my parents car terrified of going inside the gates. I was alone. I was not accepted and really miserable. I felt seperate and unlike the people inside that school.

Then one fateful day I tried out to be a cheerleader (mortifying when I think of it now) and met a girl who introduced me to a boy, that changed my life. I was such a sad kid. I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders half the time. I had a lot to do and had seen no one succeed before me. I was a tragedy that sat next to the trash can near the girls bathroom. Then I had them. And best of all, I had him. The person I would know as my best friend for years. The kid that taught me how to laugh with abandon. To run around and play hide and go seek at 15 (I had never done it), to not take the world so seriously, to figure out what the kid in me wanted first and use that kid as a guide. He helped buy me a yearlong pass to Disneyland because he wanted me to continue to have fun, was my first date to a formal dance, my first love, subsequently the first guy I ever saw come out of the closet and most times, the first person I run to if the need to hear "You're going to be okay Karlita" comes up.

Thank you for showing me that in finding my childhood I would find the truest version of myself darlin.

I love you, Happy Birthday.