18: "A Walk In My Shoes"

Beginning my sophomore year, when I finally started making friends and having a social life, it became apparent to me that I needed to find some way to merge the life I had known with my new relationships.  My home and my family are such a big part of who I am, and I don't think anyone can truly know who I am as a person until they've been there and seen it first hand.

I've been lucky enough to be able to take friends to my hometown several times, and collectively those trips comprise my 19th-best college memory.

The first trip was a great experience at the time.  I took two of my roommates, Luke and Casey, and our friends Mava and Monica for a night at my grandma's house.  It was hilarious when we showed up and multiple members of my family remarked that "I thought Zach was making it up when he said he had friends now."

We went to my family's restaurant and got the VIP treatment.  They actually had to push two tables together to contain all of our food.  We ordered a couple of pizzas to share, plus appetizers, an entree per person, and desserts.  We spent the night at my grandma's house, where I lived for a few years.  That night, I actually cried a little when I was going to sleep, because I was so sad that my grandpa couldn't be there to meet my new friends.  He would have loved it, too.  The next day, we went over to Juube's house and had lunch downtown St. Joe.  It was a really nice time all around.  They met all my aunts and uncles and little cousins, which was fun.

The next fall I think was when I took Emily and Julie.  Julie stayed for a whole weekend, but Emily could only stay a night.  We did the same routine, but reversed as we watched the Michigan-MSU football game at Juube's house.  It was then that my grandpa made fun of Emily for letting me sleep at her apartment once a week and asked her if she was pregnant. (At the time, I was going around sleeping in my friends' homes as part of a social experiment and he was inquiring about that, but Emily was really confused and embarrassed and didn't know how to respond.

The next group of people to visit were Bethany, Loui and Ginger.  That was maybe the nicest, calmest weekend of them all because we went to a movie (The Descendants - very good by the way) and spent a long time just chatting with Juube and grandpa.  My favorite part was telling my grandparents the story of how Loui and I became friend (which I'll elaborate on later in this countdown).

The fourth trip home was with Luke, Monica, and Jennifer for her first trip.  That one was nice because instead of eating alone at the family restaurant we were joined by my aunt and two cousins.  And THEN, my grandpa AGAIN asked one of my friends (this time Jen) if she was sleeping with me; he actually said, "are you sleeping with Zach, too?"  The poor girl's face turned red and it was even more embarrassing than what he said to Emily.  But also very funny.

All in all, these trips meant a lot to me because I could show off my home, my little cousins, and my family, and give my friends a better understanding of my childhood and how proud I am of my past and where I come from.