• When I was younger and my brothers were in the high school at the same time, I would just watch them and learn from their mistakes...My oldest brother was a senior and the other was a freshman...I thought the high school would've been the greatest times of their lives...One of the reasons is that they played football and they were really good...I remember it was such a big deal when my oldest brother was on the local news in a small county...My brothers would soon be included with the first Buckingham football team to ever win a postseason game...One morning I answered the phone and it was my oldest brother's friend...I handed him the phone and went to my room only to hear crying in the room next to me...He had just heard that someone close to him was killed in a car crash on prom night...They would eventually go on to the state championships and lose...The next time either one of them touched a football afterwards is when my oldest brother would play for a small-time arena football team in Alaska where the military stationed him...He graduated and dropped out of college while the other would drop out of high school in his freshman year...That following summer, their mother died...I woke up on my birthday near the beginning of the next school year to the sound of the middle brother crying...Another friend was killed in a car crash...They were always in bad situations and I had to learn from it all...When I reached my freshman year, I had noticed how different the high school was...It was more of tradition to me than anything else...My mother and my oldest brother were my only two real family members to graduate...My father dropped out in 11th grade due to the birth of my oldest brother...I would have to make my family proud by making it past 9th grade and graduation...I wanted to bring a state championship ring to my brothers and tell them that it belonged to them...Since I was born with a coarctation of the aorta valve, I would never be able to play in any sports...Now that I am in my senior year of high school, I feel like I finally understand my oldest brother...I feel like I am finally in his place...These kids look up to me, now, and it seems the more people look up to you, the more you realize how much time has flown by...My best friends are never there, but at least they are still among the living...I guess I should be grateful that the only bad I have faced in my high school days is the fact that I never had a relationship like my brothers have...The oldest brother married his high school girlfriend and they have a 3 year old son while the middle brother has been seeing the same girl for about 2 years now...I have yet to keep a relationship longer than a month...High school didn't prepare me for college...It prepared me for the rest of my life...