Tunnel Vision

Last week a fellow journalist died in a car accident.

A lot of people at my job knew him as a kid from SIUC who died in that terrible accident the other day but I actually knew that kid, Ryan Rendleman. I went to school with him, I worked with him at the school newspaper and most times I talked about him on the phone with my girlfriend because that Rendleman was truly a trip. 

His passing made me realize how quickly our lives can be taken away from us and how I really haven't done much to contribute to society, or to my obituary if I were to die today. 

When I hear about someone my age or younger being pregnant, getting married or doing something that I would consider a grown up act, I gawk at how advanced they are, in a negative way, when I should really be getting just like them because life is so short! 

I am in my early 20's, just graduated from college, have never lived out of Illinois, have never smoked, don't have any tattoos, interesting piercings or children. 

This girl at my job is in her late 20's and she said she married, had two children, lived in two states and had divorced by the time she was my age. I don't know if she was capitalizing on the fact that she was stupid or that I was slow... because initially I was thinking the first but now I am realizing that I should have been thinking the latter. 

So on that note, tomorrow I am going to get a tattoo! 

hahaha my mother would kill me. Am I too old to be scared of my mother?

Anyway, I am not going to change my life, but I will look at things with a much older eye and try to do more adult things because I am still living in the (I want to say college world but since kids are having kids in grammar school I'm gonna have to say) kindergarden world when people "our" age just don't do that. 

But people do die... there is no age limit on that, so I am sad that someone close to me died but I thank Ryan Rendleman for allowing me to see the light before I entered the tunnel.