These Streets

It feels very bizarre to be here again.

I drive around these streets and I feel like I never left...until I see the new billboard on the corner and the new paint job on Festival. I visit my old house and feel at home...and then the new roommate walks in and it just feels weird.

I go to school and see old friends and everything is familiar...and then the new freshmen walks into brass quintet, and it's like a different place.

Change happens whether you're around or not.

Parker is taller than me now...he's fifteen, and its really surreal. He takes drivers ed in a month. Wade doesn't work at church anymore, and Z is leading worship in Video Cafe. There's a mini choir in the sanctuary...and a forest of fake plants.

Fred is engaged. The cross is gone from the hill by Menards, and there's a new Starbucks on the corner by Best Buy.

They are playing a new morning game on the radio. For the past 13 years, there was "The Brain Game." Then I move and they start playing "You Can't Win".

It's funny how change can take a place that you've known most of your life and turn it into someplace different...well, almost.

At least Jewel's is still there. And Jake still has his same crazy-afro-hair. And at least I still feel at home at the Fischer's and Mary-Kaye still makes great cookies. The stop light at the corner by the church is still to long and those obnoxious signs for "The Shrine of the Lady Of Guadalupe" haven't gone anywhere. Tylor still sings everywhere he goes, and Tammy is still flustered by Pinnell classes. Vinnie is still fat.

Parker might be taller than me, but I can still take him.

Yeah, it's good to be home...