I was born into a University of Texas family, and I was raised within a burnt orange shadow — meaning at a young age, I fell for the Longhorns. Hard.
For pathetic or worse, some of the seminal moments of my life have involved UT athletics. Which raises the question:
What’s wrong with me?
This was not the original idea. The original idea was to explain everything I’d do differently if I could do high school again.
But the more I considered it, the more I wondered: If given the chance, was I truly capable of rewriting my experience, or would I be destined to let history repeat itself?
I dated my wife for over five years before she became my fiancee. I took so long because, emotionally, I wasn’t ready to be a husband, but I also struggled to make sense of marriage. Weren’t we already exactly like a married couple? So what was going to change?
More than I thought, actually.
Which band do we want? What color should the groomsmen wear? Can our rehearsal dinner video montage be made to resemble A-Ha’s “Take on Me”? For my fiancée, Emily, and me, the planning process for our wedding was routine.
Until 32 days before “I do,” when a new entry was Sharpie’d onto our to-do list:
Cancer.