Brei and Dylan

My sophomore year of high school I met a girl. And the only thing I remember, is that she thought I was a senior and made fun of me for having an AU lanyard with only my house key on it. That was it. Not much else. Then the next year, we happened to be in the same video production period together. I had wanted to make a video making fun of freshman and the myth of the high school’s pool ever since I got into video production. But, it was not allowed due to bullying issues and what have you. Well, either way, Brei and I thought one day “why don’t we go try to make a video about the pool and see what happens.” And who would’ve known… that that thought changed the course for the rest of my life. We roamed the hallways looking for people to ask “Where’s the pool”. Days, and days... drone school, after school… editing, shooting… all resulted in a 5 minute video. “The Pool Video”. It was a hit! Everyone loved it, and it was super fun to make. And, it was easy for Brei and I because we couldn’t come up with content for the LIFE of us, so, we let others be funny, and we made the video. It was genius! We then devised a plan to make a series, titled the A-Files. We would come up with fake stories about teachers in the high school, then question other students and faculty about it. First, was Mr. Condit. It was a hit too! Everyone seemed to love the A-Files. Because of this, we decided to make 4 more. And boy do I have stories about these videos… but I’m going to share two in particular. For Mr. Shawver’s episode, we went and bought a cake from Hawkins. We left during lunch. Drove down the street, and “vlogged” the whole thing. We walked through the parking lot, and as we were walking into the store, Brei runs out in front of a car and almost got hit. Once we went inside, we bought a cake that said “Happy Virus Day” (because October 3rd is Virus Appreciation Day). We went back to the school, got a green screen, took it outside, and SMASHED the cake to get a realistic “explosion”. Well. It didn’t work. And that’s why the cake explosion in the actual video looks so bad. For the Christmas A-Files, we made Mr. Carr dress up as Santa Claus and drive us in his minivan around Ashland. That… was a wild day… Sadly, though, we started running out of ideas and it kinda fizzled away. Little did everyone know (or maybe it was obvious… who knows) throughout all the time it took to make these videos… I was kinda starting to like Brei. I would go to the jewelry counter at Walmart (where she worked), just to talk to her. We would sit in the hallway and eat lunch together, we would leave school to go to the store, or shoot random videos. We became best friends. Either way, I knew I didn’t have a chance because she was too pretty and she was already dating someone. Either way, we started doing more together, and making more videos. We got to be on the Resilience movie set together. So much happened from January-May. Then, it was time to say our goodbyes. It was our last day of school. Brei was graduating. I didn’t really intend to see her much after this. All we were were “video partners” and now that we didn’t have VP, there really was no reason for us to hang out anymore. It was sad, but inevitable. Fast forward through the summer. We saw each other a few times, but it just made me sad because I wanted more than anything to be with her. Finally, landing in September of this year. Exactly a year later from the creation of the pool video, she’s single! So, I obviously talk to her (even thought she knew how I felt) and I tried my hardest to continue to fight for her. And then my dream came true on November 28th, 2018… the day I could finally call her my girlfriend. Throughout this whole time, she really was there for me. We made dumb videos, we had amazing moments. We laughed so hard at the smallest things. She’d give me bruises on my leg because when she gets a good idea she liked to punch me. We sat in a little nook in VP. Just the two of us. Every day. Editing a video, looking at something dumb on the internet, trying to find a 10 year old game from Animal Planet… And gosh was it worth it. Brei is more than I could ever ask for. I love that we listen to worship music when we drive somewhere. We can both name/sing every song on our playlist. We love Christmas more than anything. I’m so thankful for the season of waiting. As hard as it was, and was lengthy as it may seem, I know it was all in God’s plan. All in His timing. Brei and I help each other grow relationally and spiritually, and we have been for the last year. And it all started because of a dumb video making fun of freshman that didn’t know where the High School’s pool was.