My favorite memory would have to be going to the Leadership Forum at the Junior League with Ms. Rector and some of my classmates from the Honors' Leadership class.  We went to hear a man named Charles Jaco speak about his experience as a CBS correspondent.  Afterwards, four of us and Ms. Rector went to Chili's.  I had told them I turned 18 the week before.  The waiters brought a hot fudge sundae and sang happy birthday in off-tone voices.  All of us were laughing hard.  Everytime I think of that, I start laughing to myself.

    The four years I spent as a Dulles Viking will remain immortalized forevermore. I remember my freshmen year was the last time we had the Bonfire at Regal Ranch, when my nose got singed by a tiny splinter of burning bonfire wood. I also ran for class president as a freshman and lost, by one vote, to Guillermo Lopez, who would go on to graduate in 2004, one year early. Of course, one lasting memory for me and millions of others will be September 11, 2001. On that Terrible Tuesday, I was in Mrs. Batek's English class reading The Most Dangerous Game, and Mr. Marshall said over the speakerphone the Twin Towers were hit. When I walked into Speech class later that day, the towers had just collapsed. I was one of hundreds that went home that day.
      Some of the fondest memories I recall were from all the cross country meets I worked at as a "place card holder" for Coach Carrabine, and can recall that one time a meet got cancelled because runners got sick in hot weather (one guy even had to be Life Flighted, bless his heart). Of course, we often went to Luby's after the meets where I stocked up on six plates of food. Also, the last two years of my high school days, we even had a foreign exchange student on our team, and we worked very hard to adjust them to American life.
     I also remember videotaping four years' worth of high school basketball games. We went to Arlington the last three Thanksgiving weekends of my high school days for the same basketball tournament (and the complimentary barbecue dinner and mall trip we took there), and also playing the best teams in town in the Outback Steakhouse Classic. My junior year, we went to the playoffs and after advancing to the Regional Quarterfinals, we decided to take a trip to a CiCi's Pizza over on Memorial...just as they were about to close up for the night...and ended up with full bellies.
     Of course, my Dulles memories aren't just about cross country and basketball. In fact, one big moment in high school was on the final game of my senior season, the Friday after Valentine's Day, when I dressed up for Sadie before the game, went to the dance afterwards, and came home as 'Most Unforgettable' in 2005. I can also remember the volleyball team's trip to the Regional Finals and the one game against Clements where the 'Evil Empire on Elkins' creeped up and sat right next to us halfway through the game, and all the times Byron Hrbacek went to the opposing side of the fieldhouse to boo our rivals.
     I also remember during my Dulles days we re-started our FCA chapter and formed a Young Life club, which actually never affiliated that much with the school but kept our name (and culture) intact with that organization. I also remember we had a bunch of kids come over from Settlers Way because we had the whole FM 1092 bunch go to Thurgood Marshall. I remember Brian Needham, Kristin Carlyle, Jaime Kennedy, Stephen Rabb, Kassie Moronko, Julianne Levine, Amanda Irby, and several others as well as a bunch of Quail Valley kids (Amanda Loos comes to mind) that, like in the past, made sure we were several hundreds bigger than Dulles Middle School.
     I also remember the Shocker signal (Aaron Elson, Adam Bindon, Andy Angulo, Chase Chapman), the 'blackshirt men' (Byron Hrbacek, Trevor Dippon, Ben Schoenberg, Kadin Sheppard, and Zac Lawson), disrupting the cafeteria at lunch on several occasions, Jason Leverett ("Flame") trying to run towards home after school, the one time the girls' soccer team didn't make the playoffs (junior year, when Kristin Carlyle was not playing for Dulles), Stephen Ontiveros' transformation from a lost Clements Ranger to a spirited Dulles Viking, Jonathan Jackson's bragging about liberal arts schools few, if any, have heard of, Amanda Mullings' unusual hand-to-foot stretch on the cheerleading platform (BTW, cheerleaders placed fourth at nationals senior year), the girls' basketball team #2 ranking in the nation before they got booted at Regionals in OT, going to State for Student Council in Arlington and doing the Wigalow after going through the biggest ride at Six Flags...Over Texas, the one time I drank blueberry milk and acted stupid, the one time we went to Chris Deans' house in Sweetwater just to do a project, all those times I skipped school to go to court for my dad and his company, the life-sized guillotine Nick Noble, Michael Tarantino and their gang built for English class, and the one time I was late to the SAT and had to come back another day to do it. There was even the end-of-the-year karate chop of the Poisonwood Bible books in Mrs. Ables class. If 'We Didn't Start The Fire' were to be redone for DHS, this would be the perfect story to write the lyrics.
     In a nutshell, my Dulles days were the best FOUR years of my life to date. Next stop: college. That's where FOUR even better years will come up. But nothing, and I mean NOTHING will compare to the Dulles High School Experiment. Like John Mayer...

                                                    I just can't wait til' my ten year reunion