18 years to life!

Well don't let the title mislead you. Yesterday was my 18 year wedding anniversary. I look back on my life and can't believe that I've managed to make it this far. Let's just say that there was a time in my life that I wasn't even sure if I was going to live through the day. When I was in 7th grade my pop, who was in the USAF, got orders to Nellis AFB in Las Vegas, NV. Now for a teenage boy who practically lived his whole life in Biloxi, Ms this was a drastic change. Moving from a school of maybe 300 students to school with 2,000 was quite a shock. Not only was I at the akward age of 13, but I had never been out of MS for any length of time. I had an accent, was the new kid, didn't know anyone and was completely out of place. Fortunately for me there was another "new kid" at the school who moved from TX and had a worse accent than me. It worked out that we had several of the same classes and became really good friends. So, for the follwing couple years Sean (my friend) and I became the best of friends. This was good thing for me because my dad's new job had him working 12 hour days and my mom was enjoying life in the casino's on a regular basis. I had become a latch key kid. I would wake up, go to school, come home and not see my parents at all on some days and only very briefly in the evenings on the others. Needless to say, I thought I had the great life. I was a teenage boy of 15 with no real responsibility and pretty much total freedom to come and go as I pleased. And then it all came crashing down. My friend moved to Phoenix, I was briefly dating a girl that turned out to be quite literally crazy, Jarrin was her name, and started hanging around the "wrong crowd". One thing led to another and I started skipping school, drinking, smoking pot and getting into fights on a routine basis. Of course, with my new friends, I thought this was "cool". I was wrong. When I stated getting death threats followed by getting shot at and being chased by gang members from other schools you would think I would of learned my lesson and tried to straighten up, but it took watching someone I knew get shot right in front of me before I realized it was only a matter of time until it was me on the receiving end of of a bullet. My parents, after months of this behavior and my running away from home talked me into moving back to MS to live with my grandma. I took them up on this offer and this was my first step toward getting my life back on track.
I was 17 and a junior in high school when I moved back to MS to live with my grandma. It took a lot of time for me to adjust to the slower pace of life I had originally left when I first moved to Vegas. I was struggling with school, actually I was struggling with "going" to school. I was skipping and only showing up when it was convenient for me. Luckily, on one of the days I made it to school I met Heather, who is now my wife. Heather was a cheerleader and lived a very sheltered life compared to what I was used to. She never did anything without her family and i mean the whole family; mom, dad and her 3 sisters. So, I called her up one night and asked if she would like to go out with me one night. She said yes and on a Saturday night her and I went out with my brother (who is older..see above posts as I must mention this fact as much as possible to make my getting closer to 40 more tolerable) and his girlfriend Debbie, who is now my sister-in-law. We went to Wendy's and the Silver Screen to watch the original Die Hard movie ( a couple of big spenders). It was great until we realized that we had to get Heather home by 11pm and the movie was still playing. We were late. How is that for a first date impression? Her parents were ok with us being late becasue I walked her in and explained what happened. This was the first date with my future wife. It's crazy to think it was that long ago. From a first date in 1988 to 18 years of marriage. She must be FREAKING crazy. Anyway there is a lot more to this story, but I'll save it for another time.