There are a lot of moments that I wish I could remember forever; things like my first home run, the scent of my grandparent’s home at Thanksgiving, the first time I got laid. There are also several moments that I wish that I could forget, like when I got my first concussion, when I broke my father’s prized tabletop lamp, the second time I got laid.  There is a moment in my life, however, that seems to blur the line between what l feel l should remember and what I feel doesn’t deserve even the slightest reminiscence.  It starts on August twenty-seventh of 2005.
     Seven days after my sixteenth birthday, I found myself amidst my closest kin, from my grandfather down to the wee little tykes of the bunch.  With the looming presence of a certain hurricane Katrina slowly but violently approaching the coast of Louisiana, there was an unusual silence in the humid air outside of the Friend residence in the Lakeview suburb of New Orleans.  Inside, that was not the case.  Despite the swirl of violence coming toward The Big Easy, the Friend family was having a gay old time inside, celebrating my coming of age on the day of my birth.  I constantly took glances out of the window facing the street outside, wondering if things were going to take a turn for the worst.  Despite my worry, the weather stayed quite tolerable.
     After thoroughly shoving as much carrot cake as I could down my esophagus, my brother, father, stepmother, little half brother and I all gathered around our television to hear what the news anchor had to say about hurricane Katrina.  After listening to what the weatherman said, my father and stepmother decided that the current time would be the most opportune moment for evacuation from the city. “The streets are clear; the weather is as well; the house is clean.  There’s no reason not to pack up and take off and leave this

house,” my  stepmother told my brother and I.  I was stunned that she could say such a thing. Only moments after opening a present from my dying grandmother, my stepmother had the audacity to tell me to pack up and leave as if the home that we had lived in for so long didn’t matter, and that all of the memories encased in the walls of it were obsolete.  What stung the most, however, was how she described our home.  She described it as a “house.” It was not a house.  It was a home.
     Reluctantly (very reluctantly), I agreed to pack my clothes and board up my window.  My father came up to my room while I was doing so and said to me, “I know it sucks, but it’s not like you haven’t done this kind of thing before.”
     “I know how to pack clothes for this shit, dad,” I said to him in a morose, contemptuous tone. “I just don’t think that this is the greatest way to celebrate my birthday, packing up to leave town for however long it is this time.” I received a blank stare from my father, who simply could not say anything to comfort me.  With only a few tears rolling down my cheeks, I slowly closed my bedroom door, and sat on the foot of my bed, silent, thinking about whether or not this was the storm that everyone says that it would be. 
     My standard “hurricane evac pack” typically consisted of three to five days worth of clothes, a pair of flip flops, an iPod, and some sort of literature, be it an automotive periodical, some sort of pornographic magazine, or some other heavily texted booklet.  Little did I know that my supplies would have to last me two weeks on a miniature donkey farm in the rural town of Jasper, Texas. 
     My stepmother had some relatives in Jasper that had some spare room for our family to stay in for the duration of the hurricane.  As bizarre as it may seem, they actually owned a miniature show-donkey farm that had thirty-four miniature donkeys, twelve or so cats, three or four miniature horses, three full size horses, innumerable raccoons, and two alligators named Izod and Izod 2, all on the banks of some unnamed river.  Contrary to what I had expected, it was quite a comfortable place to stay.  I felt guilty for being so

comfortable, for I knew in the back of my head, everything that I had accumulated in my father’s house, both tangible and not, had been lost.  At one point, while riding on an old jet ski that was laying around the property, I went as fast as I could down the center of the river and threw my hands up, looking at the heavens, and went silent.  While the water crashed and zoomed by the craft, I could not help but mourn what I knew would surely be a tragic sight.
     After staying there for two weeks, glued to the television screen, watching the turmoil, thinking of how pathetic the situation had been handled, we, as a whole family, returned to our home. 
     Once back in the recently renamed “Chocolate City,” I saw things that should never be witnessed by a country so developed.   It looked comparable to Hiroshima.  I honestly thought that if a bomb had been dropped on a city, this must be what it looks like.  There was debris in every direction that the eye wandered.  The sight of newly unearthed corpses that had settled on the edge of the street was all too common.  After finding a suitable hotel room for the five of us, my brother and I decided that it would be good for us to go into our old neighborhood and assess the damages that had occurred to our home. 
     Along the way, we picked up Melanie, a close friend to my brother.  “Joe,” she said, “What do you think it will be like?”
     “There’s no telling what we’ll see,” he said in a numb, monotonous voice, “I can only hope for the best, but I expect the worst.” The rest of the car ride was silent.  With the sound of the tires chugging along, bounding over the cracks in the pavement, all I could think about was what I was about to witness. 
     Upon arrival, all three of us, Melanie, Joe and I, were silently gazing upon a sight to be reckoned with.  Due to the decay from the standing water in the neighborhood, we were able to walk directly through the side of the building without having to use a single door.  Once inside, the smell was so horrid that we took our hands and quickly placed them over

our mouths and noses.  We then separated and my brother was joined by Melanie.  I felt more comfortable rummaging through stuff alone.  After about an hour of observation of what used to be a home, all three of us met up on the balcony of my fathers’ bedroom.  Only two sentences were uttered the entire time that we stood there on the broken balcony.  After five or so minutes of silence, Melanie said, “There’s nothing left of this house,” I agreed.  Maybe ten, maybe even twenty minutes later, my brother, in a tone that struck a chord of termination, said to me, “We need to go.  This house is no home to us any longer.”
     It has been three years since that day, and I find myself, in a sense, coming full circle.  Almost three years to the date I last set foot in the house that I called home for the majority of my adolescent life.  Looking back, there is nothing about the ordeal that is worth forgetting or locking away in the black box in the back of the hall of darkest memories.  An incident this tragic is the thing that shapes and dictates what kind of person I may become in the future because of the harsh lessons that come with harsh realities. 
     In the wake of the tragedy that struck New Orleans three years ago, I’ve been to many places, met many people well worth remembering, and formed many bonds that cannot be broken, and created much stronger bonds with the people that are already in my life. 
     It is without a doubt that I say no matter what, all memories, be them good, bad, tragic, memories of ecstasy, memories of moronity, memories of glee, or memories of glum, all memories should not be forgotten, for they may always teach us lessons.