In the Red Corner..

Standing at 6'2'', weighting 240 pounds, coming out of Amarillo, TX, we have Matthew Bridges!

Honestly, I don't know why I decided to use that as the opening line for my intro, but I guess it got the job done. I also decided on using the Red corner because I love the Red Sox. Don't get me wrong, I love the Rangers as well, but I didn't want to use Blue because that's the color the Yankees abuse. I decided to start a blog because, basically, I didn't have one like pretty much everyone else does. And I particularly enjoy reading everyone else's blogs too, and thought.. "Why don't I have one?"

There may be a couple posts that touch on sensetive issues. There may be a couple posts that will offend a couple of readers. There will certainly be posts that will make you laugh. There will most certainly be posts about cars, because, face it, if you know me just a little, you know I love cars.

Now to give you some background on who I am. I'm Matthew Bridges, and yes, those are really my numbers. I'm a very traditional and conservative Christian who was raised to say "yes sir" and "yes ma'am" and to hold doors open for people. I'm not really your typical American college student. I may be college-aged, but I'm not your average partying, washboard-stomached, hearing, cool, douchebag college boy. If you missed that, I dropped "cool" in there. I can also be sarcastic as well.

Yes, I'm hearing imparied, but since I'm really politically incorrect, I'll stick with "deaf." I was born that way in 1988, but never at one point since then have I wished I was "hearing." Certain challenges arise from being a deaf person that I believe the average hearing person wouldn't be able to complete, which gives me all the more incentive to get through life as a deaf person. I love challenges, being pushed to do something, because of the motivation it gives me to finish something makes the feeling of achieving it in the end worth it. I'm also a very technical person, which means I like things very precise, organized, and I like to know the certain details about something. There are so many goals I have set for myself in the short time I'll spend on earth, although I know I won't complete them all, they do make life more interesting and challenging. A better description of my goals would be "a hundred lifetimes worth of goals with one lifetime to pull them off."

I also like to debate stuff with other people, I like to make arguments that will potentially lead to me learning something from the other person, or possibly change my opinions on a certain matter. There are a lot of pet peeves that I have which could explain why I react to some people, issues, or situations the way I do. Much like everyone else, I dislike discomfort, being annoyed, awkwardness, or basically just the unnecessary. As a result, there are certain kinds of people, events, or things that I avoid. There are times where I do step out of my comfort zone and do something stupid, scary, or even dangerous.

An example of that would have to be the night my brother, Andrew, and I decided at the last minute to take a drive to 6 Flags in Arlington, TX for Deaf Day at 6 Flags. Deaf Day, which took place on August 7, is an event whose objective is to try and draw in as many deaf people as possible for the purpose of deaf people socializing with other deaf people. I probably should mention that Deaf Day started at 10 am, and we decided 10 hours prior to come, and a drive from Amarillo, TX to Arlington, TX typically takes between 5 to 6 hours. Our mother had left town with her younger sister on Friday at 4-ish to go to her high school reunion and would be back on Sunday, which gave us more reason to make such a spontaneous decision. It started as a short but sweet conversation sitting on the couches in the living room at midnight.. I got Andrew's attention and said "You know what would be cool?" and he responded asking what. I then said "If we showed up at Deaf Day at 6 Flags." to which he inquired "But that starts in 10 hours?" and I confirmed that it did indeed start in 10 hours. He looked at me with a worried look and asked what we would do, and I said "We could go to a friend's and shower, then go to 6 Flags, and drive home right after." and he thought to himself.. and I finally closed the conversation with "Come on.. Why not?" and he agreed. We packed a backpack with a change of clothes, shampoo, soap, the usual bathroom stuff, and set off on our 6 hour long drive at one in the morning.

A concern was what we would drive, as seeing we doubted either of the trucks we had would make it, so we tried getting ahold of our sister, Ashley, but that turned out to be unsuccessful. So we decided to take my brother's '89 Nissan pick up. I should point out that this truck had a problem with the starter and flywheel but that was taken care of.. Then shortly after, we found out that the truck had been driving for a couple of months with nearly no transmission fluid and oil in the motor. Of course, that was taken care of, and no damage actually happened to it which made it a more logical choice. Still, there was a cloud of doubt as to whether the truck would actually make it to Arlington.

So, we set out on our journey to Arlington in a beat up Nissan truck with no A/C or heater at one in the morning. We drove down the 287, finally arriving at our friend, Josh's apartment in Fort Worth to take a shower and change before setting out for 6 Flags. We had gotten to his apartment at around 8 to 8:30, and left at 9:30. His wife, Libby, was urging us that we stay and sleep a little, or even overnight so we wouldn't fall asleep at the wheel on the trip home. Of course, we were against the idea. We got to 6 Flags at around 9:45, parked, and proceeded to walk up to the front gate. I would like to give tremendous thank you's to Josh and Libby Bonjour for letting us take advantage of their guest shower.

We got in the park and saw a bunch of our friends who were all very shocked we made it there, and not just that, but in a beat up Nissan! A couple of our friends and we went and ate at Chili's at around 5:30 in the afternoon,we then left at 6:45-ish to see a couple of friends in Haltom City and another neighborhood of DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth for those of you who aren't native Texans) before setting off for home. We left at approximately 9 on Saturday night, then after a couple of negative discoveries involving not doing a couple certain tasks that Andrew was required to do that could have potentially aided our mother in discovering what we were doing. Now, folks, if you know my mother, you'll agree that she'd disapprove of this. We set off to drive all night and finally got home at around 2:30 in the morning. We woke up, got dressed, and headed to church here in Amarillo, TX.

No one knew of this journey except for us 2 and our friends in DFW. I knew at some point, our mother would find out, so I decided that it would be better I let the cat out of the bag than someone else did. So, mom got home at around 2 in the afternoon, walked in the house, and asked Andrew and I if we had fun. The looks on our face immediately made it obvious to mom that something had happened this weekend, but she wasn't sure as to if it was a positive or negative "happening," so she was trying to find out from either Andrew or me what happened. Then she turned to Ashley to find out, but she refused to let our mom know. I then sat my mom and her sister at the bar in the kitchen and explained to her what had happened between midnight on Saturday and 2:30 on Sunday morning. Needless to say, she was shocked at how much we had accomplished in 26 and a half hours, and then muttered "I'm never leaving you 2 alone in this house again."

You could say I do have my moments of instant spontaneity, and oftentimes, they're a considerable amount of sponateity. But after all, I do want my life to be interesting. Don't you?