The art of forgiveness

For the people who know me know that I am a die hard fan of the BYU football team, I just love the thrill of having a home football team that I can root for. If you live in Orem or Provo you know that since Bronco Mendenhall took over as coach the team has been getting better and better, thus making the tickets harder to buy, specially if you like to wait until game day like I used to. This is a story of love, of how the human heart can act in the worst of cases, of how one must learn to just laugh at life's hard moments.

It had been a great year for the Cougars and I was able to score tickets for a few home games, I was dating Jennifer Young (now Jennifer Roura) and she was not a big football fan like I am, the closest she been to being a fan was in High School, she was a cheerleader for school and to her credit she was not familiar at all with football or its rules, so I took it upon myself to change that (if she was going to be dating this hunk of man, she sure as heck was going to learn to love my Cougars).

The days were getting close to the end of the season and I was trying my hardest to keep up with the ticket purchases, I was just not used to having to fight for the right to own a 17 dollar piece of paper that gave me the right to have an uncomfortable bench all the way up in the nose bleeders. So I got in the habit of buying the tickets early at the Marriott Center. It was getting better to this point I had been to a couple of games so I decided that one more would be great. Jenny and I decided that we would go to one last game with her brother Brian, keep in mind that to this point Brian wasn't sold on the idea that I was going to be taking his baby sister away from him. So 2 week prior to the game we go and get the tickets and its all love man! I mean we got tickets and I was loving it.

The day of the game was upon us, Brian calls me and asks me if I know of anyone who would like 2 tickets to the game, so the first person I think of is my man Andres, so I say "yeah man, I think I know someone" So I call him up and he is like "you kidding right?, the game is sold out" I said "man you know I got's the hook up Dwag!" in my best effort to pretend I'm gangsta. Jenny and Brian come to my home and we take off to that fateful event that for all I know was a make or brake for our future life. I had been guarding the tickets like crazy, I had them in a white envelope in my jacket inner pocket the whole time and I was not about to take them off my eyes.
We picked up the extra 2 tickets for my friend and his son and off we go to the circus which is finding parking for the game when it had already started, if you been you know that it is literal hell trying to find a spot. I was driving my Jeep and to find a spot for that car was not going to be easy, but I was up for the challenge. We finally get there and it is a mad house and if there is one thing I hate is not being able to find a parking spot when something sweet is waiting for me. We eventually found a spot but as It was a challenge to park, I handed Jenny my ticket and hers with out the envelope, as well as Andre's 2 other tickets, Brian had his as well. I finally parked the car after a few maneuvers and near misses of another car's bumper.

On we go to the game, we start walking and the conversation is all great, laughter, love and joy but boy was that about to change. Andres lived in American Fork so he was just going to call us as soon as he got the stadium for his tickets. We had walked a good mile from where we had parked and I get the feeling to ask Jenny for the tickets, she grabs hers out of her coat pocket but she tells me that I have my ticket and the two extra ones also, my heart literally sunk to the pit of my stomach, my eyes got big and wide with disbelief, I retaliate "No baby, I gave them all to you when I was parking the car remember?" please say you do, I told myself. To this she starts remembering, "Oh yes you did" I was so glad to hear her say that, my heart beat was back to normal, my eyes shrunk down to their normal size. I began to smile again, but that smile faded when I saw her checking all of her pockets, jacket, pants, purse, nothing.

"I don't know where they are baby" I was getting so angry inside that as I am writing I am getting sick to my stomach at how much something so little could anger me. She was beginning to see my frustration, the mood was down now, it was no longer a glorious day but a sad a dark one. A day we had been looking forward to for almost 2 weeks was now a dreaded situation, I was holding back so many emotions, and I am sure Jenny felt so bad and dumb that she had lost the tickets, the tickets to her boyfriends addiction. I was ready to yell out but I didn't want to make a scene, I told them Ill be back Ill go back to where we parked and maybe ill find them. On my way back I was talking to myself, asking myself "why did you give her the tickets?" If only I would have kept them like I had for 2 weeks none of this would be happening, but now it was to late, I found myself walking all the way back to the car scanning the floor for anything that resembled 3 BYU tickets, but no luck. I was hoping that I would be able to find them inside or around the car but again no such luck. I had been dealing with some anger issues and I let the situation get the best of me, I punched the fender of the car and gave it a dent that was there until a bigger dent hid it from sight when Jenny got in a car accident last year, but that's another story.

I walk back to where they were hoping to see them giving me the thumbs up, in despair I got no such response. I was so mad, but what could we do? only Jenny and Brian had tickets and I didn't. Jenny was feeling so bad and mad that she told me why don't you and Brian go and ill just go home, for some reason that made me mad because we had just lost 3 tickets!.... I was like No! that's dumb, not the best reaction from me, she saw the anger and that made her react to it the same way, she got her ghetto attitude tone and said, "I didn't mean for it to happen, and you ain't making this any easier on me!" I was so fed up I was like what ever!, we start walking to the stadium and Jenny starts walking with Brian in front of me, and then among all that anger and frustration I hear Brian like always trying to defuse the mood, to cut the tension. Laughing and playing with Jenny trying to make her feel better about the issue he said "Gonka, don't worry this could have happened to any one of us, just know that one day you can tell this story to your kids" I was just amazed that he could take such a bad situation and turn it in to something to tally different. My eyes were opened, I felt like such a moron for making the woman I love feel stupid, this is not what a boyfriend is supposed to do... right?

I walked up to her and apologized for acting so dumb, the tickets were gone and there was nothing no one could do now but laugh. We eventually got in the stadium with the 2 tickets that were left, I called Andres and told him the bad news, he was disappointed but not mad. As for me I could hardly enjoy the game, I was so focused on how I made Jenny feel that I was overtaken by guilt. I learned that day that once someone forgives you the hardest thing to do is to forgive yourself. As time passed this proved to be the making point for our relationship, Brian saw that I was humble enough to apologize for being an idiot, and he embraced me as a brother. The Art of Forgiveness is a beautiful thing to have, I know that those tickets were meant to be lost, so that we could go through this right of passage if you will to see how much we truly loved and respected one another.