Extreme Days

On Thursday, for the first time since leaving home, residing in a foreign city with strangers and unfamiliar customs and buildings, I felt at home.

For the past few weeks, I had been telling Bek that I wanted to watch "Extreme Days," the movie of our growing up years. I remember it being funny, and I wanted to watch something funny. However, while we watched it, I didn't realize that the film carried much more with it than just humor.

When we were in middle school, I had a group of friends. We hung out together, went to church together, and knew each other better than anyone else. The group consisted of Me, Hunter Watson, Chad Corley, Rebekah Edwards, Karlie Hatchett, and Sarah Winkler. We were average, church-going middle schoolers, and at that time I was a carbon copy of Hunter. We would often go to Bek's house to swim, watch movies, and eat food. It was a familiar place at which I felt comfortable.

One day, I don't even remember when, I brought "Extreme Days" to watch a Bek's house. My family owned the movie because my sister and her cool older friends watched it and loved it, so I thought it would be great. When we watched it at Bek's, we all loved it. So much so that we watched it again a few weeks later. The film became beloved in our group, an inside joke that gave us inside jokes to quote and laugh about. To this day, if I ask Sarah or Bek "is it on, or is it on standby," they will instantly start laughing. It's a classic.

Well, we got older, and we began to go over to Bek's house less and less, until we stopped going all together. Our group dissolved, morphed into other groups and eventually faded away.

Now to Thursday. It was only me and Bek watching "Extreme Days" in her room. I felt like we were the remnants, the only ones left from a group that no longer exists, as if we had survived or something. As we sat on her bed, the movie started, and we watched with glee how funny the movie still is, even though we are older. I was surprised to find that the character Matt is one of the funniest characters I have seen on film anywhere. He is hysterical. Everything he says made me crack up. Even thought the movie is terribly made, it still had a place in my heart, even after all these years.

As each scene played out, it would jump into my memory seconds before it came on screen. I would remember each scene right as it started, and I would remember the humor with fondness. I found that "Extreme Days" is a part of my past that I don't resent, but actually draw joy from. "Extreme Days" makes me feel like I am home.

Along with the feeling of belonging, the film actually presented a point of perspective for me. One of the main characters, Brian, makes a move on the girl character, and she gets spooked and leaves for home. Brian's brother Will finds Brian in shambles, eating his weight in donuts. Will says something that is probably really cliche, but I haven't heard it that often and it makes sense to me. He says that "Jesse [the girl] was given to us as a gift," as if the time in which she was with them was limited from the start, and that every moment she is with them does not guarantee another. I think that's how we should view every relationship. Things change, and people leave, and the world doesn't stop for anybody, and we should learn to use that as motivation and insight, not depression. Picking someone at random, if I lose contact with Jake and don't speak to him for years on end, I need to realize that his presence in my life was a gift, and that I should cherish the time and experiences I had with him. I think this makes each relationship, each encounter more meaningful and precious.

All I know is, I feel at home now. Which is good, I guess. Haha.