19

It was my birthday on Saturday.
Kim threw a party for me at her place.

During the course of the night, I happened to talk to my roommate, Erik's, girlfriend.
She's 19.
I thought back to my 19th birthday. This just so happened to be the day that I quit school.
I was going to Bellevue Community College at the time and on that day, I think it was a Monday, I went out to get into my car and I noticed a flat tire.

I'd been having a not so great time with school and that just happened to be the last straw. I said "Fuck it" and quit school.
The whole school year went by before I decided to try to pick it back up. I'm glad I did. I suppose I could have been out of school a year earlier, but then my life would have been totally different. I'm sure there were also life lessons that I picked up along the way while being out of school... like how I didn't want to work at Fred Meyer for the rest of my existence.
It did take me 8 years, but I got out of there...!