Birthday Week

My birthday is September 16th. There is a joke in my family that everyone has their “birthday week” so my birthday week started on Saturday September 9th. This was hands down one of the worst weeks of my life, but it has molded me into a man.

On the first day of my birthday week i was in Salt Lake City visiting Westminster University and The University of Utah. i had the opportunity to watch my cousin, Peyton, play volleyball. Peyton plays for San Diego State; she was at the University of Utah playing the Utes. Her dad, Harley, and our cousin, Travis, little did i know that this would be the last time that i see my cousin Travis alive. After Peyton was done playing Harley and Travis went down to Grand junction, CO to do 4x4 races, after traveling about 5 hours they had made it to the race. In the middle of the action Travis and Harley lost control of their vehicle and fell off of a 250-foot cliff where Travis died instantly. Harley was trapped in the vehicle for several hours as rescuers tried to recover both bodies and the vehicle. When the wreck first happened we were told that both Travis and Harley had passed, but Harley was still alive. I was the last person to see Travis alive, and that haunted me. I found this out on Tuesday September 12, 4 days before my birthday.

I came back to school on Wednesday September 13th already in a sour mood, i didn't want to talk to anyone and i for sure as hell didn't want to be talked to. But the date September 13th 2017 will forever be etched into my brain. As i was walking through the top hallway of my high school with my friends i hear this loud tick. My friends and i looked back down the hallway as a fellow classmate had brought two weapons and he was looking to harm others. Before we could even start to talk, there was a shot. I instantly started to shove my classmates out of the way down the hallway. I didn't care who it was, i didn't care what they had done to me in the past. I just wanted to help my Freeman family. I had finally reached the stairs along with a mob of students. Not a single student's foot touched a step as we all lead down two flights of stairs. I looked down the hall to my right and saw some of my close friends and a couple of teachers. Since they didn't know what had happened i informed them, we all then proceeded to go into our lockdown procedure. A dozen of my classmates and i were hiding in a corner of a classroom with a lockdown buzzer going off for about a half an hour. After frantically texting my friends to make sure everyone was ok, i had found out that there was one casualty. Sam strahan had given his life for his classmates, he tried to stop the situation and had been shot.  Along with sam there had been three underclass girls that were wounded.