15 Things A Relocated Floridian Appreciates About "The North"

I was thinking this morning that I really have enjoyed our relocation to Columbia, SC.  If you take out the facts that I hardly have any friends up here, that just about all our family lives a major drive away, that I'm stuck with coverage of USC sports instead of UCF, and that we all really miss our friends in Florida, things are awesome.  Living "up north" isn't so bad.  I've found many things that I actually prefer living in the northern reaches of our country.

[Ed. Note: We realize that South Carolina is not "up north" by any stretch of the imagination.  But, take into consideration that it is eight hours north of where the writer grew up.  Moving eight hours north of Columbia puts you in Cleveland.  Think about that.]

1. You can leave cold food from the grocery store or chocolate in your car for a few minutes to run another errand without worrying that you will come out to a pool of nastiness in your trunk.
2. You can make it all day without the ice in your cup of soda or tea melting.
3. Hot drinks are extra good because they warm you up when it is cold instead of adding to the already severe case of heat stroke you've developed in the middle of January.
4. You don't have to mow your grass for months when it is dead due to the many random freezes.  And it apparently comes back as grass - not weeds.
5. Speaking of grass, you can roll around in the grass without itching all over or worrying you will get a "grass cut" (similar to a paper cut, but with a grass blade).
6. No lizards. 
7. It SNOWS!  Everyone up here said that it "hardly ever snows" in Columbia.  Yes, but by definition, that means it DOES snow at some point.  Growing up in Florida, in NEVER ever snows in Florida.  And don't try to tell me that just because a couple of flakes fell in Pensacola or Tallahassee and were on your car windshield for six hours that it snowed.  Unless it covers everything, it isn't snow. We've already had it snow twice here - one "Florida" snow and one real one that stuck around for five days.
8. SNOW AGAIN!  People north of us hate snow because it never goes away.  But having it come a few times a year is pretty cool.  The fact that the South is completely unprepared to handle any level of snow also means that you get to have entire days off to play in the snow.  That rocks.
9. No Halloween Horror Nights commercials.  
10. No Morgan and Morgan: For the People commercials or billboards.
11. Elevation.  The land is not flat.  This is cool to me.  I never liked the fact that the highest point within fifty miles of me was a dump.
12. Teenagers answer me by saying, "Yes sir."  Every school I've taught at with Kaplan, that has been consistent.  Politeness is underrated in America.  (Could I have sounded more elderly there?)
13. Gas expenses are much lower.  One, the gas is cheaper.  Two, things aren't so far away that a thirty minute drive is a normal expectation.  Thirty minutes here gets us to the other side of the city.  An hour almost gets us to Charlotte.  It takes me five to ten minutes to get 90% of where I need to go.
14. History.  There are Civil War and Revolutionary War battlefields all over the state.  Sure, there are a lot of people that don't like the way the first one of those turned out.  But as a history buff, I like to experience areas that existed before Walt Disney built a theme park.
15. South Carolina has a cool logo.  I'm not talking about the university (although they also have a cool logo and great colors).  The state itself has the palmetto tree with half moon logo that is everywhere.  At first, I was confused.  I asked our realtor why South Carolina had a logo that looked like a Muslim symbol.  His snarky reply was, "It was designed by a Muslim."  Then he laughed because that was so ridiculous.  Or because I was so dumb that I even thought that in the first place.  Eventually, though, the logo grows on you.  It is everywhere - usually in blue and white.  And it looks really cool.  Florida doesn't have a cool logo.  What would Florida even use?  An orange? A sun? An aligator? A bag of cocaine?

Yes, there are many things I don't enjoy about South Carolina.  I hate mustard based BBQ sauces. The taxes on cars, restaurants, income. Racists.  And there are many things that seem identical to Florida - terrible drivers, massive potholes in the road, bugs.  But there is also a lot to enjoy in the Palmetto State.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go sit in carline and not melt.  OOOO, there's another thing...

Out of the Box: Epilogue

When I was seventeen years old, I had just finished up my junior year in high school and was getting ready for my awesome senior year.  Naturally, to celebrate this momentous occasion, I went with three other students and our faculty sponsor to a Yearbook Workshop in Columbia, SC.  I had been named Copy Editor of our school's yearbook at the end of junior year. The three biggest positions on yearbook were Editor, Photo Editor, and Copy Editor.  The Photo Editor was Matt Brice, who was my best friend.  The Editor was Kerri Sutton, who I had been good friends with since seventh grade.  So the three of us, another photographer, and Mrs. Paula Marie Stevens hopped on a train to get a jump start on the yearbook creation.  It was a fun trip.  I had not traveled much growing up, so seeing a new place was cool.  Riding a train was interesting.  And I discovered on the trip that Matt Brice could not be awoken by anything but an alarm clock - not yelling, tapping, punching, kicking, shoving.

I don't remember many details of that trip.  I know that may be shocking to those of you who know me.  I have a bizarre ability to remember extremely minute details of events over thirty years ago.  And my wife swears I know the first and last name of every person I ever worked with or went to school with.  [Hence the Paula Marie Stevens listing earlier.  She used to sign notes when she was angry with "PMS."  I found that hilarious.]  In my defense, most of the trip was working on yearbook layouts, determining headline fonts, generating story ideas, and creating the theme and cover.  So it was pretty monotonous.  I remember two things very clearly.  One, we ate dinner one night at California Dreaming restaurant.  Two, I thought Columbia was an unbelievably ugly city.  My assessment came from walking across the street from our hotel to the workshop location (I think the Carolina Coliseum).  I looked around mostly saw industrial areas that looked half-abandoned.  So I always thought Columbia was ugly.  I told people this most of my life.  "You want to know the ugliest state capitol in America? Columbia, South Carolina."  Like I had visited all the state capitols and come to this decision after intense scrutiny.

We have now lived in Columbia for over two months.  We have driven all over the place.  And here is my assessment of 17 year old David - he was a moron.  I have not even found the place that brought me to that opinion.  I have driven through downtown, around the campus, and in a loop of the city.  Unless I was seeing the southeastern quadrant of the city towards the football stadium, I have no clue what I based that opinion on in the first place.  In my head, Columbia looked like a smaller version of Pittsburg or Birmingham or something.  Far from it.

I love Columbia.  From my first trip up here to look around for housing, I liked the city.  I took to the city faster than anyone else, which is strange.  I can find my way around pretty well, except on Two Notch Road.  And I am very comfortable here.  We have lived all over Florida - from the tropical mini-Cuba of South Florida to the concrete jungle of Tampa to the South Georgia lands of Tallahassee to the touristy urban Orlando to the beachy, country, sprawling Jacksonville.  Columbia has a lot of elements of those cities that we like.  But it is blended in a way that suits me well.  I know that I wrote quite a bit leading up to our move, but have not given many updates afterwards.  I just wanted to throw out some quick observations that may explain why I like it here so much.

1. The People Are Nice
Floridians are not nice.  Americans in general are not nice.  I remember flying back from Australia in 2000, landing in Los Angeles, and being greeted within five minutes with the reminder of why so many people hate Americans.  The people here are still nice, for the most part.  Sure, they have rude drivers.  And the lady that works at Taco Bell seems to be borderline sociopathic.  But overall the people are nice.  They are polite.  They are helpful.  I like that.  Call me strange, but I prefer to talk to nice people.

2. The Traffic Is Minimal
With the exception of a couple roads for a couple hours a day, the traffic here is extremely mild.  People up here complain about the traffic.  They apologize for it when you first get here.  We laugh at them.  We explain they have no clue how bad traffic is until they have been in a parking lot on I-95 or I-4 or I-275.  The traffic in Orlando on regular roads is worse than rush hour traffic on the interstate here.  I am amazed at how light the traffic is.

3. The City is Small
I came to the realization that cities in Florida are enormous.  They cover a tremendous amount of real estate.  One time, I was teaching a class for Kaplan.  They pay you at different rates depending how far you have to drive.  I actually got the long-distance mileage rate for the class and never left Orlando.  The really crazy thing was I could get the second tier of long-distance mileage pay and still be in Orlando.  The same is true of every Florida city I've lived in.  Even Tallahassee, which is hardly a metropolis compared to Orlando, Miami, Tampa, or Jacksonville, takes forever to drive across.  Here, unless there is some bizarre traffic apocalypse, you can get from one end of the city to the other in 25 minutes.  I couldn't get to the doctor in 25 minutes in Orlando.  Heather sometimes took an hour to get to work in the morning - just going downtown.  Now, it takes her 10-15 minutes.  We actually both just went two weeks without filling our gas tanks.

4. The Architecture is Gorgeous
It helps to have amazing architecture when your state has been around for so long.  So much of Florida was developed in the last half of the 20th century.  So much of it looks the same.  Here, there are old stone churches, colonial style government buildings, European looking buildings.  Just a drive across town usually causes someone in our car to say, "Ooo, look at that building."  It is neat to go into a business that isn't in a 1980s era strip mall or stay in a hotel that has unique character.  As a history ed major, I appreciate that there is actually, you know, history here.  Very cool.

5. Golf is Bigger Than Anything But Football
I'm not necessarily happy about this, since I don't play golf and don't really watch golf.  I've been shocked to see the amount of coverage given to golf here.  The fact that Dustin Johnson got engaged to Paulina Gretzky made the front page in the local paper.  The fact that some woman was possibly going to win the grand slam of majors got more coverage than the NBA finals or the MLB drug fiasco.  To get some blowhard ranting about the major sports, I have to go read The Orlando Sentinel.  Unless that blowhard is talking about South Carolina football.

6. So Many Grocery Store Options
We have several Publix stores here, which is great.  We love Publix and that is our main store.  But it's nice to have options.  We have Bi-Lo, Piggly Wiggly, Kroger, Fresh Market, Whole Foods, Earth Fare, and Trader Joe's - plus Walmart and Target.  We have a lot of options.

Just so you think I'm completely enraptured by Columbia, there are some negatives.

1. Bugs
I thought I knew bugs.  I lived in Florida, home of the gigantic flying cockroach and mutant mosquitos.  I was wrong.  We have so many bugs up here.  They are determined to get into my house and terrify my children.  The mosquitos here are like ninjas.  They may not be big enough to carry off our dog, but they bite all of us and we don't see them.  We have like ten kinds of bees, several wasp types, and flies.  And then there are the spiders.  Good grief.  Spiders everywhere.  I hate spiders.  But the one that is probably the grossest is the house centipede.  Seriously.  Go look it up.  I'll wait. ....  Did you vomit?  Imagine waking up to one of those crawling across your ceiling.  I did this morning.  Still phantom itching from it.

2. Car Property Tax
So, let me get this straight.  I have to pay every year a property tax on a car I outright own and park on my own property?  And not like fifty bucks either, but $700 combined?  Each year?  To pay for road maintenance?  You've seen the roads, right?  Which roads are you maintaining, exactly?

3. Nuisance Flooding
Have you ever heard of nuisance flooding?  I would think you could just call that "flooding."  Here, nuisance flooding is when the streets flood or canals overflow or a parking lot is underwater.  You know, not "real" flooding.  Apparently we moved here in the wettest summer in over fifty years.  One of Natalie's teachers apologized about the rain.  She said, "Normally it is over 100 every day and broiling hot and dry."  Well, shoot.  Put that on the tourism book!  I'm not complaining about the rain.  I like rain.  I just think it is bad when you have two different kind of flooding.

4. Mustard Based BBQ
I love BBQ.  Anyone who has read my blog or Facebook knows this.  But I have discovered a kind that was universally rejected by our entire household.  Mustard based BBQ is disgusting.  I don't even get the point of it?  Good BBQ should stand on its own without sauce.  If you add sauce, it should enhance the flavor.  So why take perfectly good BBQ and cover it with a mucus-colored sticky mustard sauce?  The worst is that there is a chain here called Maurice's.  They are everywhere.  And that is all they sell.  You can't get it plain.  It has to be covered with mustard.  Nasty.  Which just makes us miss 4 Rivers even more.

5. No Malls
We used to complain about how bad the Oviedo Mall was.  That would be the second best mall in Columbia.  That's how bad it is.  The two malls near us are atrocious.  One has literally five stores in it.  One of them is a Belk clearance center..  It's sad, too, because they have a movie theater and a beautiful Barnes and Nobles there.  But everything else closed.  The other mall has a bunch of weird stores and a pathetic Sears. We have to drive over to Irmo to find a "real mall."  Irmo is the one place in town with consistently heavy traffic.  Probably because they have a mall.  The only place close to us is an outdoors mall, like Waterford in Orlando or St Johns Town Center in Jax.  We've been told that if you actually want to shop, like for Christmas, you'd be better driving to Charleston.  This is more saddening than it should be.  But we do have five Lowe's and I've been to all of them.

That's a quick look at our life in Columbia.  It's nice.  We're looking forward to experiencing Fall and seeing the downtown and historic areas during the Winter.  And we have not yet had to deal with home SEC football games.  We've heard that the city is insane on those weekends.  So far, we are loving it.  Which leads us to the moral of the story: seventeen year olds are not to be trusted.

Out of the Box: Friends

I'm sitting here waiting for the movers and thinking about leaving my home.  I'm not talking about this house.  After living at 19 different addresses in the last 20 years, I have gotten over mourning a move.  I'm talking about leaving Orlando.  Ever since I fled South Florida (the region, not the university) for UCF back in 1992, I have seen Orlando as my home.  In my adult life, I have lived in Tampa for four years, Tallahassee for two, Jacksonville for one, and Orlando for fourteen.  I love this city.  I love the vicious afternoon storms that have numbed me to the fear of a "real" tropical storm.  I love the close proximity to a major university, a decent downtown, and even a tourist mecca.  I love being within reasonable driving distance to ever city in the state I would need to go to.  I even love that our unofficial city mascot is a cartoon mouse, even though I think said mouse would get his tail kicked in a fight with Bugs Bunny.

The point is, Orlando is awesome.  We have loved it.  We have had to move before, but there was always the expectation that we would be back very soon.  This time is different.  This feels final.  We know that there really is no way to move back for at least seven years.  Residency is three years and Heather's fellowship is another four - something they don't even have available in Orlando.  At that point, Josiah will have graduated from high school, Natalie will be in high school, and Gabe will be entering middle school.  (Did you just have a panic attack at that?  Me too.)  The even bigger thing to consider is that Heather is entering a specialized field of pediatrics.  She is going to be a pediatric pulmonolgist who works with kids with cystic fibrosis, severe asthma, and premie babies.  There are entire states without a single doctor of that type working there.  Orlando has several practices located here.  Isn't there some responsibility to go where people need the physician instead of just where the physician wants to live?  We think so.  That means that this move is most likely NOT going to have a return relocation. Sure, we will be back to Orlando.  But not as frequently as we would like.  Heather has limited vacation.  My mom is moving back to West Palm Beach.  Heather's parents like outside Jacksonville.  If we are coming to Florida to visit, those two cities are the most likely landing points.  We recognize all of this and have accepted it.  But that is why this has been so hard.

I spend a lot of time talking about restaurants and churches and stuff like that.  Yes, I will miss the ability to go to Four Rivers BBQ any time I want (except Sundays - unless they cater a church event on Sunday).  I will miss Tijuana Flats and Tenders and Jeremiah's Italian Ice.  I will definitely miss our church.  I will miss being close to THREE Apple stores.  But, that's not the real reason it is hard to leave Orlando.  I had planned on writing about jobs I had here and churches we attended here.  But the thing that kept popping up was the collection of friends we made over the years.  I have some truly amazing friends that I love dearly.  Leaving them stinks.  I know we all have Facebook (except for Aaron, who is reading this thanks to the link on Google+).  And I've had people helpfully offer, "You'll make new friends."  That's what I tell my kids to make them feel better.  But it never works on them either.  I don't WANT to make new friends.  I WANT to pack all my friends up in this truck in my driveway and take them with me.  But I don't want to be negative or sad.  So I am going to celebrate my friends instead.

I feel like I have had several different eras in Orlando.  First, there was the overarching UCF experience.  Within that, there were actually two distinct experiences.  There were the first two years when I was in Student Government.  Then there were the second two years when I was in the BSU/BCM/BSM/BCU/Baptist Group and attended FBC Oviedo as a student.  Totally different groups of people.  I still keep up with some of the SG guys, mainly through Facebook.  But the BCM people have been my friends for nearly two decades.

• Matt and Sarah Sharp - I have known Matt since Kindergarten.  Literally.  We were good friends at King's Academy together.  I used to go hang out at his house and play with his Star Wars toys when I wasn't allowed to watch the movies.  He left TKA after 2nd Grade.  But we still would see each other at various academic competitions ("Nerd Games").  Then we went to 9th grade together.  We ran into each other visiting UCF in our junior years.  And we roomed together in our freshman year of college.  We were in honors classes together and he invited me to BCM.  He was in my wedding.  We have been friends for almost 35 years.  He is one of the most brilliant people I have ever met.  He is hilarious and always good for a discussion on sports or movies or comic books.  And his wife Sarah is very giving and kind.  She had done our family photo shoots for years.  She brings us clothes for Gabe when her son outgrows them.  She has done tons of special things for us and our kids over the years.  Great friends.
• Allen and Candy Turner - I became good friends with Allen during my junior year in college and  roomed with him my senior year.  Way before they started dating, Candy used to be part of the cadre of BCM students who would come to our house to watch Magic games on our big tv.  Allen has been one of my very best friends over the years.  I was in his wedding; he was in mine.  He was my co-best man.  The funny thing is that over the years, Candy became one of my wife's best friends.  They got close when we attended church together about seven years ago.  We watched their son all day when their daughter was born.  We have babysat each other's kids.  We would hang out together ever New Year's Eve.  We would play Dutch Blitz together.  Their kids went to the same preschool as ours.  I cannot even list all of the ways they are special to us without tearing up.  Their family is one of the five hardest things to leave about Orlando.  I must move on.  It's getting dusty in here.
• There are other BCM friends that I still see around town like Byron and Bern Kirkpatrick, Mark Dao, Jeff Kipi and his family, and Jamie Waters.  That is one of the really neat things about having decades of history in a city.  You go to Target, go to Publix, go to church and run into people you know.  We have common friends.  If we ended up at a party with any of these people, I could spend hours talking to them.  That familiarity is hard to match.  

After I graduated from UCF, I moved to Tampa and then Jacksonville.  After about five years, we moved back to Orlando where I worked at First Baptist Oviedo for over four years.  There were some overlaps with my BCM crew at this point.  But I also forged dozens of new friendships from that staff experience.  It is actually hard to believe how many people I know from this time of my life.  This is the Target crew or Mall crew.  I go to Target on a Wednesday afternoon to kill time in between getting the kids and run into someone from FBC Oviedo.  It happens about twice a month.  They may be from First Years Preschool, from the staff, or a church member who I knew from a project or event.  These are people like Ron and Dana McKay, Shannon Chambley, Marlene Olsen, Diane Strathdee, Jim Wadley, Cheryl Pavuk, Debbie Ellison or Schmidt, Randy and Donna Moore and family, Jill Myers, the Mannas.  I also taught college Sunday School for years there.  I had tons of students that came through those classes that have now gotten married and had kids.  I watched them start as freshmen and blossom into brilliant and tremendous adults, workers, parents.  Some of them have ended up as teachers in the area, some are ministers, some are counselors.  I have had kids in preschool with their kids.  One of my favorite things as a teacher is to see the end result of a student.  It isn't the frustration you have when they are learning.  It is seeing that person as an adult out there and changing the world.  That is such an amazing feeling.  I also became very good friends with Tiffany and Erik Wieder.  I worked with Tiffany at the church.  I remember when she first started there.  Her life had been so tumultuous and she seemed shell-shocked.  It was a friendship of mutual teaching, though.  I would talk to her about some things, and she would talk to me about others. She helped me to understand how wrong my worldview was when it came to issues of compassion and social awareness.  I helped her to realize meat was worth eating and there was hope for a better future.  Once she and Erik got together, I had the pleasure of watching that relationship blossom.  I did their premarital counseling and performed their wedding.  I remember having a broken heart when their first child nearly died after being born early.  Heather and I were in Jacksonville for Christmas and just desperately wanted to drive to Orlando just to hug them.  To see this boy now, you would never know he was ill.  He is thriving and rambunctious.  They have a beautiful baby girl, in addition to Tiffany's stellar teenaged daughter.  We love their whole family.  We can easily kill hours and hours talking.  I'm almost disappointed to go to a movie with them because we miss out on talking.  

Thanks to FBC Oviedo, I became friends with Charles Wise.  I remember the very first time I sat down with him was when he took all of the secretaries out to lunch.  (What?  I was a secretary.  Want to fight about it?)  I heard about his counseling ministry and was blown away.  I went home after work and told Heather, "I met this guy today who run a counseling ministry.  He was awesome.  I know it is strange to say this, but I really want to work with him at some point."  At first, I did some freelance graphic design work for him.  As years went on, we talked more and more.  In 2006, we ended up starting Defender Ministries together.  For the next seven years, we have ministered together and grown to be very deep friends.  I can't count the number of lunches we have had together. (But I can count the number I have paid four.  Five.)  We have traveled all over the place to speak at Defender events, run seminars and breakout sessions, and scout locations for future projects.  There is very little that we don't share with each other.  I don't know if I have ever had a deeper friendship.  He knows almost everything about me and I know tons and tons about him.  He encouraged me so much to develop my skills in writing and design and speaking.  We have worked together for over seven years and we have never had a fight.  We have had maybe two disagreements.  We don't always see eye to eye.  But I believe there is such a mutual respect that we still value what the other person says even if they are wrong.  Through the Defender experience, I became much closer friends with Brad Crawford, the BCM Director at UCF.  We would drive the vans for him to National Student Week.  Brad had me come and speak once a year at BCM.  He would make me pulled pork, although not as frequently as he should have.  I also further cemented my friendship with Aaron and Jill Morrison.  I knew Aaron as a student in BCM and worked with Aaron at FBC Oviedo.  We became good friends through our time working together.  But our friendship got deeper after those years while I was working at Defender.  It was probably because we didn't "have to" see each other and "chose to."  I ended up performing Aaron and Jill's wedding.  When they started going to Summit with us, we again intensified our friendship.  They came over twice to help us pack, just because.  They went to Islands of Adventure with us just to help us have a better (and cheaper) time. Two of the most giving people I have ever met.  

The last four years we spent in Orlando seem like an entirely different era.  We had this huge history with FBC Oviedo, BCM, Defender which all blended together because they pulled from the same pool.  Then things shifted.  We stopped going to FBC Oviedo and ended up at a church plant.  I had to get other jobs to subsidize my income from Defender.  I started working at International Community School and Apple Retail.   Heather was preparing to go to medical school, which meant we were "on a clock" of sorts.  Our church still had some familiar faces - the Kirkpatricks, the Turners, the Sharps, and Randy and Susan Gillis who we were familiar with, but not super close to.  It turned out to be a wonderful shift of experience.  Our friendships with the Turners, Kirkpatricks, and Sharps got a jolt and developed a new dimension, with Heather getting to know all the principles better. We got to realize the Gillis family was a blessing sent from God.  And I got to make a whole new group of friends that had nothing to do with my college years.  Apple was a wonderful experience.  It ranks as one of my favorite jobs ever.  I still would go back and work there part time if I could.  I loved just about every day there.  Plus, I got to meet people like Neil Otto, Chris Anenome, and Veronica Fish.  ICS was a great place for me.  I got to teach and invest in the students there.  I also got to know the teachers and become friends with them - Carrie Baker, Wendy Bowerman, Shelly Uner, William and Jessica Eggleston.  I also spent time with the parents like Wendy and Steve Kreidt.  And I met Greg Willson, the most bizarre example of "It's a Small World" of them all.

When I got hired to teach Bible, the class originally was all taught by "Mr Willson" who I assumed was an old man who would hate me.  The kids were all hacked to get split up.  The administration decided to have half of the class with Greg, and half with me.  The half with me was mad.  I figured I would be walking into a landmine.  When I met Greg, I realized I had guessed severely wrong.  He was younger and awesome.  I loved getting to school early for my class just to talk and joke with him.  He was a part-time minister and a musician and an Apple fan.  I kept telling Heather how much I liked Mr Willson.  One day, she picked me up from school and he was walking by.  I said, "There goes Mr Willson."  She looked up and said, "Wait.  What is his first name?"  I told her it was Greg.  She asked if he was from Middleburg.  I said that quite frankly I didn't know.  He had indicated Jacksonville.  She told me she was in band with him.  Uh, what?  I walked over and got him to come to the car.  It was true.  They had gone to high school together and been in band!  Their moms had been friends.  His wife had been in high school with my brother-in-law Mike.  Bizarre.  After our year at ICS, I moved to Tallahassee.  But I always managed to have lunch with Greg when I was in town.  We kept close when I moved back, mostly by eating at Four Rivers or Chipotle.  He was on church staff and he told me that they were planning on relocating to a church in Columbia, SC.  Then we ended up matching in Columbia.  So we are both moving up there at the same time.  Our counselor also turned out to be one of Greg's best friends.  It truly is a small world after all.

Upon our return from Tallahassee, we again were in a new place.  We had med school friends that came back with us.  Even though they were mostly Heather's friends at first, they became my friends too.  It was hard to say goodbye to these people at graduation, knowing Facebook was going to be the main contact point with them since we scattered all over the country.  Zach and Jasmeet are headed to Michigan.  Katrina is going to Louisiana.  Sheallah is staying in Orlando.  Even our dinner club - a group of couples that ate at ethnic restaurants monthly - have splintered.  Mark and Shannon are staying in Orlando.  We are going to South Carolina.  Richard and Meagan and their soon-arriving baby are going to Baltimore.  We also ended up at Summit Church for our final stretch here.  It was unlike any church experience we had ever had.  I got to serve by writing, something that is extremely rare at a church - to have a lay person writing.  I also made some tremendous friends like Michael Murray, John Parker, OJ Aldrich, and Brian Hogan.  One of the best things about Summit was the Gillis family.  They have always been a part of my Orlando story, but it seemed in a "close call" way.  Randy was in the UCF BCM, but he graduated right before I started going and went to seminary.  Then he was a college minister in Gainesville when I was a college minister in Tampa.  We went to the same conferences frequently and became familiar with each other.  They moved back to Orlando just after we did.  Their oldest daughter is the same age as our oldest son.  At a birthday party for Allen Turner, they showed up with their infant second daughter, who was a week older than Natalie.  They enrolled their kids at First Years just like us.  We went to church with them at the church plant and Randy and I were on staff together there.  They had a third daughter by that point.  We started to get close as a family during that time.  What really solidified things, though, when they had their fourth child and first boy less than a month after Gabe was born.  Those two have been friends since birth and now are best friends.  They play together all the time.  In fact, our families both play together all the time.  The kids are all matched up in ages.  Randy and I play the same computer games.  Being at Summit together gave us even more opportunities to share experiences, which was awesome.  Randy and I wrote together for the kids' service.  Since Gabe and their youngest were at First Years together, I saw Susan all the time.  We would pick up each other's kids, watch the kids for each other.  During some family events for the Gillis family, we had all their kids spend the night.  We even shared a babysitter!  All four adults are all friends with each other.  It has been a truly amazing family friendship.  It also is one of the five hardest thing to leave in Orlando - if not the hardest.  I know my kids shed many tears about leaving the Gillis kids.  It was heartbreaking to see Gabe broken up about losing his first best friend.  I've got to move on again.  Stupid dust.

All in all, I count myself supremely blessed to have had the friends I have.  They have refined me and defined me.  They have helped me to grow into the man I am and have had patience with me as I did.  They have encouraged me and lifted me up.  And each one of them holds a treasured place in my heart.  In response to the answer to finding new friends, I may be able to find new ones.  But they can never replace the crop I have now.  They are gifts from God.  I firmly believe that.  And I thank God that I had them for whatever time I did.  So thank you all.  You can never know what you meant to me.  I love you guys.  

Out Of the Box: Introduction

When Josiah was a little guy, preschool television had not completely exploded into the mega-billion dollar industry it is now.  There had been some major hits like Bob the Builder, Blue's Clues, and Barney.  But there also was a lot of stuff that fell into two major categories: Canadian Kids Television and Crap.  Nickelodeon had not launched Noggin (which later became Nick Junior).  Disney had not come up with Preschool Disney.  Entities like Baby Einstein and The Wiggles were just coming onto the scene. So for those early morning hours after the big kids went to school and before preschools got out, these stations tried to fill the hours with shows they purchased from other groups.  That is where Canadian Kids Television came into play.  For some reason, there was more groups in the Great White North that funded kids tv.  So they had developed more shows.  It was always amusing to hear all of these shows with their Canuck accents and our children learning words, sounding like young hockey players.  (The same thing happened with The Wiggles, except with all of our kids sounding like extras on Crocodile Dundee.)  Disney and Nick snapped up rebroadcast rights to these shows and filled their lineup (PB&J Otter, Franklin, Little Bear).  Unfortunately, they also purchased a lot of shows that fell into the Crap pile.  Sometimes these were also Canadian shows, but more like Quebec (technically, it is Canadian, but they like to remind us that - like a divorced couple - that province has TWO parents and one is France.)  This explained shows like Doodlebops, because there really wasn't any other possible explanation for that monstrosity.

Before long, Disney and Nick realized that creating their own shows was far more profitable than buying existing shows.  So they slowly replaced all of the imports and created their own shows with infinite merchandising rights.  Brilliant financial move.  But for anyone who had children in the first few years of the new millenium, we will always remember those other shows.  One such shows that landed squarely in the Crap pile was Out of the Box.  It was so dumb.  Absolutely ridiculous.  They had the "clubhouse" like Barney.  They had the two super-earnest hosts like Blues Clues.  And they had, well, not much else.  Oh, wait, they also had this horrible theme song set off by terrible puns.



Whenever I hear the phrase "out of the box," this is what pops to mind.  It has made me hate the phrase even more than most people who are encouraged to think outside of the box.  This past Sunday, we had a guest preacher at Summit Church.  He talked about living outside of our box.  I held in my usual aversion to that line to listen.  He was talking about how we can have extremely busy lives and still be unbelievably bored.  We get into a monotonous routine and get stuck in a rut.  As a result, we start to make choices that are easy and comfortable to stay in our box.  He challenged the church to start to be willing to move out of their box (or comfort zone or hedgehog or whatever catch phrase you happen to embrace).

I looked at Heather and we both said the same thing.  We already got out of our box.  Back in February, when we had to turn in our Match List for Match Day, we knew we faced a tough decision.  There was Orlando - the place we called home and loved dearly and had lived the majority of our married lives together.  It had our church, our friends, our kids' schools.  It was close to both of our parents.  It had doctors that Heather had spent two years with and residents who were wanting her to work with them.  Then there was Columbia.  On the surface, there was no reason to pick Columbia.  I had been there three times - once in high school for a yearbook conference, once to take the kids to the children's museum while visiting family in Rock Hill, and once for a wedding.  It was the place we turned North when traveling to Rock Hill.  It had Steve Spurrier and team fans who found it hilarious to only use part of their mascot name to sound obscene.  But we had this gut feeling we were supposed to go there.  Heather's interview there had been amazing.  She felt drawn there and felt like they wanted her.  I really only had her word to go on.  But we both were willing to make the jump.  So we listed it first and ended up matching there.  In that moment, we were out of the box.  If we had stayed in Orlando, that would have been the easy and comfortable and rut-increasing choice.  Leaving for Columbia was the right choice.

We will be leaving in just a few weeks.  In the words of Ron Burgundy, I am a swirling ball of emotions as we prepare to go.  Normally, my response is to blog about stuff like this.  For some reason, I have hesitated to do that this time.  But I feel that I would be robbing myself of a positive outlet for me to think through this process.  And I feel that I would be robbing others from knowing the impact they made on my life.  Between now and our move in June, I plan on writing a good number of posts that will be in the "Out of the Box" series.  Some of them will be looking back at the last four years of medical school.  Some of them will be looking ahead.  And a great majority of them will be trying to explain why I have grown to call a tourist trap my home.  Instead of listing all the things I will miss about Orlando, I will write about the things I am thankful that I got to experience in Orlando.  Some of you may find yourself splayed across this site in those articles.  For that, I apologize in advance.  Some of you will not.  For that, I apologize in advance.  I know that this is the Internet we are talking about - the haven of the disgruntled, wronged and cynical.  But if I don't include you in a post and you felt that I should have, please do not take offense.  I mean no slight.  After thirteen years of living in the City Moderately Beautiful, I have to trim things down.  And if it really bothers you, let me know and I'll write something special just for you.

The first in this series (well, actually the second, since this technically is the first - although this is more of a prologue or forward and shouldn't count towards pagination) will look back at Florida State University's College of Medicine.  It will post sooner than you think.  I hope you will join me on my journey of self-reflection as we move out of our box.  Out of the box. OUT of the box.  Take one box...