Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

[Editor's note: This thing has a point, it just takes a while to get to it.]

My parents were good to me as a kid. I was born in Missouri's capital (crystalizing my sometimes tenuous relationship with freaky politics), but they moved me into my childhood home before I could recognize the face of each president by a picture out of a cereal box (I learned how to do that at a very young age and now have a hard time picking between Gerald Ford and a Ford Festiva). Most of all, they showed me how important family can be.

They kept me in that home thoughout my school years and I made damned good friends in that time. The best of them were Gary and Brad. Brad and I never fought. Gary and I only had it out once when I accused him at throwing cookies at me. We did everything together. Threw bottles at speed limit signs, stole yard reflectors that we called Pixies, and made an independent film with a working title of "Brad's Big Brother Might Take off His Girlfriend's Top in the Howard Johnson's Swimming Pool." We might as well have been family. We lived at each other's houses. Then, I went to college and stopped seeing them as much. We still remain close. Brad married and has two kids. Gary married and has a littl'un.

In college I made another group of fantastic friends. Marty the Italian Malcontent. Ben, who let college corrupt him delightfully. Cappy, Stoker, Frank, Sandra, Su, Joey Two-Hands, Uncle Brian, Boozie, Aerin, Josh, Grieb, Skip...jeez, the list could go on forever. My brother even came to college and we became better friends than we ever were. Most of us lived together at one point or another and even referred to ourselves as "family" a lot of the time. Now Marty is a prosecutor, Ben works for Anheuser-Busch (a fantastic turn of events), Cappy, Su, and Joey Two-Hands are trying to establish an urban commune in Denver, and my brother is in Med school. He delivered his first baby a few weeks ago. Almost all of them are married and the one's that aren't are living the single life becuase they want to. I moved away from them about four years ago.

I moved to Mississippi where I spent about 8 months alone. It was healthy, but it made me realize how much I needed some kind of family. My then fiancee and now wife joined me there and we realized together, it was time to move on and find a new family.

So we did. The people here (who were a family long before we arrived) opened their arms and beer coolers and welcomed us in. And for the last two and half years have made us feel like part of a family again.

I guess this is the point coming up.

Here's the thing...since we moved here, some folks have moved away, others have gotten married, and now people are starting to have kids. And today "The Note" came out. While I've known for a while that this was going to happen, the official "Tim is leaving News Four" note actully came out via company e-mail. He's been here since I was in college and is moving on to much greener pastures. It made me realize something.

I'm very close to doing what my parents did around three decades ago. Someday, I will be teaching my kid how important a family can be. After many years of learning about family, it's getting time to pass some of that on.

Don't get me wrong. I have an oven, but have no desire to cook any buns yet. My wife and I still have a lot to experience together before Kiddo Time.

What you've just read is far from poetic or even good prose...it's just me realizing that life has a timeline that I would not have predicted years ago when I was dodging fast-moving cookies in my front yard.