For the love of Leland, no more drama

This archived article was written by: Leland Lobato

Recently I was in Salt Lake City visiting friends and watching the Utah/BYU football game. Did anybody else happen to catch that? It was some sweet action. Utah dominated the first half of the game with great plays and a surprisingly good performance by their backup QB.
At halftime I took a nap which lasted until the last couple of minutes of the game. During this time, BYU caught up and the score was tied. I was glad I woke up then because I was privileged to witness overtime where Utah completely represented and won the whole shebang. Good going fellas in case anybody from the U is reading this.
However, this entirely excellent excursion into the realm of college football is not what I am writing about. It is simply a way for me to set up the real topic for today’s lesson. Are we ready class? Well good, then let us begin.
While I was at my friend’s house watching the game, his uncle and cousin showed up to watch the game. They brought fried chicken, I just wanted to mention that for the fact that I love chicken. So we’re all just kicking back eating chicken, drinking, cheering and hollering for all we’re worth.
After the game we jumped around and screamed at each other, gave some high fives and handshakes and bumped chests like we were the ones that just won the game and not actually sitting on a couch drinking beer. Needless to say, the celebration commenced with shots all around and more chicken. Of course, calls were made to a few individuals to engage in the exquisite art of smack talking. After an hour or so, we calmed down somewhat, plans were made to do some more celebrating later that night and we all parted ways.
My friend and I proceeded to take some more shots and play X-Box live until we could think of something else to do. And then, disaster struck, heralded by the sound of a telephone ring. Apparently my friend’s cousin tried to fight his own father. What a punk A-word stupid little son of a certain something or other that rhymes with itch.
I have known these individuals my entire life and love them like family. That is the reason why I was/am so angered by the situation. After my friend went to pick up his uncle and brought him back, a very interesting conversation ensued. It was about life and all its quirks and curveballs, the ups and downs and everything else.
Even though that whole situation has been resolved, I am still thinking about everything that we discussed that night. Respect your parents. I could not even imagine trying to do anything like that to my father or tolerate anybody that does. Especially if that father does what my friend’s uncle does for his children.
Another thing we talked about is drama. Why do we do all the things we do to each other? Think about it: gossip, jealousy, envy, rumors and so many activities we engage in that cause drama. Not even the good kind like you see on TV. Nope, drama is a force of negativity in our world and if Yoda is to be believed, it leads to the darkside. It might be your boyfriend/girlfriend talking to another guy/girl about their assignment for the next class but you don’t know that. Drama. Your friend saying things to other people that just are not true and for no reason. Drama, drama, dram it is everywhere. Not only that but it is usually caused by ourselves and for no good reason other than people are dumb. Drama does nobody any kind of good and yet we continue to involve ourselves in it.
If you add up all of the drama, the mistakes we make, the people that annoy us and a million other things in this world that can go wrong, or what I like to refer to as “the usual”, we do not need to add to all of that. Seriously, we should be trying to make things as smooth as we possibly can, not only for ourselves, but for other people that we run into along the way to wherever our path in life happens to take us. Trust me, life will give all of us something to worry and stress out about, many times over the years without us having to try.
That’s just the way things go, you do things, go places, see and meet people and then somewhere along the way, life happens. Forrest Gump is a perfect example. Call it fate, destiny or even divine intervention, call it whatever you want but there are things that are going to happen to us that are just not going to be cool, not even a little bit.
I wanted to share this with everybody and hope it makes somebody think and let people know that they are not the only ones that have to deal with drama and whatever else is going on. Because it can feel like that when everything seems to be going wrong and you turn to the left and everybody seems to be having the best time in the world. That’s just life happening. Don’t worry, you will make it through to the other side when you can be one of the people on the left having fun.
Having said what I have to say in far less words than I wanted to say, I wish everybody a safe and happy holiday season. And don’t forget to wear your seatbelts, please.