25 years
Today is my birthday. It is a large birthday for me; 25 years old (or young.) A third of my life is probably over. I look forward the great adventures, and exploits I will have in the future, but before I become that weathered and aged man with the eye patch, I wish to share with you the Legendary story of my life live so far in this quarter of a century.
I now present to you….
Twenty Five Years of Michael Sanders
Year One: According the accounts of his mother, Michael pointed to the moon in the sky and said his first word,“Sphere.” It was then assumed that this child would accomplish many deeds in his life to come.
Year Two: While other babies where crawling, or even walking, Michael scooted with his belly on the floor like the wise serpent.
Year Three: Michael scissor kicks his sister in the nose with his Cookie Monster Shoes in her Cabbage Patch tent. When he was spanked by his father, Michael only sheds two tears for the pain caused to the Cookie Monsters on his left and right foot.
Year Four: During the family’s pilgrimage to the land of Disney, Michael gets his head stuck in some bars in front of a pond at the Disneyland Hotel. When asked why we was crying, Michael said he was grieving for the wrongful imprisonment of the rare Shubunkin Goldfish.
Year Five: Michael fights, tames, and rides his first mountain lion. He names him Brandon. He then spends the majority of the year racing him on BMX tracks.
Year Six: The Sanders family purchases their first trampoline, where Michael starts his rigorous training in “Fight and Dance.”
Year Seven: Michael joins his first church gang, the “Coyotes.” They roam surrounding arroyos and gullies playing games like poke the rattlesnake.
Year Eight: While other children are playing with their toys, Michael is busy running extensive tests on his own action figures in feats of burial, freezing in water, flight, theater, and of course limb-to-limb transplants.
Year Nine: While the legend of Michael was quickly brewing at school, he was suddenly exiled to a new school were he was subjected to the bondage of a bi-lingual class. In defiance, Michael refused to learn such nonsense, so the evil Mrs. Sanchez made an example of him, with public ridicule, slander, extra work, and sending him to “resource” twice a week for “help.” Michael survived. Mrs. Sanchez did not; she passed a few years later of a blackened heart. ( jk, jk -but she did die though R.I.P.)
Year Ten: Michael makes his mighty return to his old school and is greeted with children waving cactus blossoms. He becomes the 4th grade class’s Barron of Stuffed Animal Friday, in which he’s given the task of assigning other students with what stuffed animal to take home for the weekend. (Secretly Michael picks all the cool stuffed animals for himself and puts them in cage matches with his own stuffed animals and/or his mountain lion, Brandon.)
Year Eleven: Michael takes his Walkabout through the New Mexican high desert to become a Man, where he learns about Earth, Wind, Water and Fire. Upon his return he learns that his dear mountain lion ally, Brandon, has fallen ill and passed. In his sorrow and despair, Michael is greeted by a young mammoth of a mammal, the mighty and legendary MOOSE. They became a new supreme alliance. So it is written.
Year Twelve: Michael becomes a kingpin on the playground. As a master in marbles, dodgeball, pogs, 4-square, kickball, and Nurf football, he leads other 6th graders in great feats and endeavors. Michael is also involuntarily enrolled into the Awanas program at church. While others are rewarded with badges, trophies, and other awards for scripture memory, he gets a pack of pencils for his “Excellence in Participation” during game time.
Year Thirteen: Michael arrives. He is granted excess into the world of the “Youth Group”, as well as the mutinous realm, they call “Middle School.” Michael also notices a striking change in the world; he discovers “Girls!” Michael also joins up with in his school’s elite society called “Falcon Football.” They become city champions going 6-0. In rebellion, or out of pure randomness, Michael dies his hair blood red. By his hispanic football comrades, he is titled “Joto Hair” ( pronounced “hoe-toe”, meaning gay man’s hair in spanish.) But Michael laughs last.
Year Fourteen: Michael discovers what it's like to like “descent” music and develops an appetite for Punk Rock, and his life is changes forever. Michael starts to snowboard, but in reverse counterculture, decides that skiing is far superior and continues to destroy ski trails near and abroad.
Michael’s world is turned UPSIDE DOWN when he learns that his father will be moving the tribe to the far and distant land unknown to all New Mexicans, the land of Virginia. Michael knows then that he will have to leave his home, where he worked so hard to establish his household name.
Year Fifteen: Now a Virginian, Michael begins high school, and starts this new life at the bottom, as a mere unknown foot soldier forced into the feudal “Courtland Football” institution. They go 0-10. Despite the dreaded imprisonment of high school, Michael befriends several life long allies, such as Mr. Morrow, Mr. Hogan, and the Stone Brothers. They would lay the ground work for a union of Fury and Fire, known as the Boyz (or known now as the Fredericksburg Crew)
Year Sixteen: The Boyz run amuck, bush bombing, pillaging, kidnapping, saving damsels, and performing “Aquatic Drive-By’s” in Mr. Hogan’s speedy chariot known as “The Sundance.”
Year Seventeen: Michael and the Boyz decide to make an avant garde indie film company known only as “Ishbu Productions.” They would, of course, be so far ahead of the times that none of their films would make it to the masses because outlets such as Youtube were not yet in existence. It was also in this year, Michael and some of the crew formed the short lived, mythically legendary Punk band called SCAPEGOAT. They played only a handful of shows, a dozen songs, and would go down in musical infamy.
Year Eighteen: Michael finally does his time, and graduates from high school. After turning down multiple scholarships and invites to Ivy Leagues schools, Michael points his sword to the school of Champions, known as Liberty University. He then joins other comrades in the Champion’s legion to be bred to seek and save for Christ. The Boyz become known as the Fredericksburg Crew, once and for all.
Year Nineteen: The dark year. Michael’s father, "the" King, passes away later in that year. Michael becomes the sole male heir to the Sanders name. He will do his father proud.
Year Twenty: In the wake of the dark time, Michael bounces back in full force. Michael grows stronger physically and mentally. While conquering with an Iron First (which he learned while taking a semester of Karate. Orange Belt; Don’t mess,) Michael finds himself discovering his fiery trade in graphic design. He then travels to far ends of the country seeking knowledge and strength via internships and vacation. While on his stay in a distant paradise, he receives a message that his old mammoth of mammal, MOOSE, has died of a big heart (he also had heart warms.) The Boyz back home conducted the burial.
Year Twenty One: Michael graduates from Man to All-Man, by wrestling a rabid brown bear on the top of a school bus full of blind children for three days. Michael and the bear finally declared it a truce, hug it out, and share warm cups of Hazelnut Honey Tea and tell stories to the sightless children.
Year Twenty Two: One summer’s day, on a hike in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Michael stumbles upon several golden tablets in the shape of vinyl records. On the tablets are the specific instructions on how to make the perfect dance mixes. With this information, Michael starts throwing the greatest dance parties of all time.
Year Twenty Three: Michael begins to work for the University by aiding and advising the Student Funtivities Department in such undertakings as the Worlds Largest Helium-Balloon-Animal parties, bi-monthly white elephant gift exchanges, and seven Family Force Five concerts. As well as aiding the department in events, Michael produces and enforces the Graphic Design and Promotional Coolness and Standards Act (GDPCSA) to keep sucky posters off the University’s walls.
Year Twenty Four: Michael graduates and gives a final farewell to the City of Seven Hills and moves his headquarters to the far North of the Commonwealth. He then sets up camp in the city which lies on the cusp of the capitol, which they call Alexandria, (That’s Greek for land of Alexander the Great.) After establishing his stay in the towering palace, many know as the “Tower,” Michael hunts for a job like a starving great wolf stalking a wounded doe. He becomes a “hired gun” of a designer to scrape by.
Year Twenty Five: Michael finds his place. While beginning a job as an elite and inspired creative force in a powerful church, Michael sets his mind and will to laying the foundations to a glorious empire. An empire starting off simple, which will grow to such a magnitude, few will truly be able to comprehend it. He wagers that there will be 12 Phases to the empire, which will only be interpreted and relayed through the majesties and the ramblings of a simple blog, from a complex mind.
And so, it is written; 25 Years under the large leathery belt of Michael J. Sanders.
