TIP

14What’s Your Story?

Saturday morning Brian woke up and immediately went up to the attic of the house. He found the large plastic container marked BRIAN’S STUFF and carried it down to the living room. Inside he found all of the items from his past.

When his parents sold his childhood home to move to a warmer climate, they purged everything. There was no need to save anything, they said. The two-bedroom condo would only hold so much, and there was no way his dad was going to pay for a storage unit. So they gave Brian all of his saved childhood memories, just as they gave his siblings their memories and keepsakes. It was all there, packed up in one big giant container.

He rummaged through all of the pictures and short stories. He found the poem about “The Chickafant” he wrote when he was six years old, which his mother got published in a local kids’ magazine. Part chicken. Part elephant. It was hideous. She bought 20 copies. There were yearbooks and trophies and pictures from birth all the way up to his wedding. But he was looking for the one particular folder that might shed some light on what “be true” really meant.

There, under his high school graduation picture was the folder marked COLLEGE ESSAY. His mother saved everything.

He opened it up and saw the handwritten draft of the essay he wrote to get into college. At 18 years old, there is no regret. Sure, maybe you dated the wrong people, or you should have taken someone else to the prom, but those are the biggest issues ...