Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Chapter 13: At Last, I’m A Senior.

Well, I’m finally a senior. I guess that means I’m a pretty big deal. It has been a pretty good senior year. Despite being disappointed about not making the play-offs in football, it was still a pretty good year. I think we got cheated, but what can you do? I made All-star, which was one of my other goals. Basketball went a lot better than expected. We should have gone farther than we did though. Baseball has gone very well. I had a bad season, but in the play-offs I have already hit two homeruns. I think we can win state, but we have to beat North Delta first. School has been easy for the most part. But we’ve had plenty of things to make it stressful. In this last half, I have also found a girl that I let follow me around and call me her boyfriend. She has turned out to be a pretty good girlfriend, and I think I’ll keep her around for a while, even though she hasn’t helped with my memory book yet. Planning for graduation and college is starting to get stressful. I’m planning on attending Holmes Community College under the Holmes Plus Program. It could turn out to be a lot of work, but I think I can handle it. I want to play college football, but I don’t want it to ruin my love for the sport. I’m still deciding on whether to try it or not. College will be different. I’m not used to being away from home and away from James, but I don’t think it will be too hard.

Chapter 12: High School: The Early Years.

At last I’m in high school. My Freshman, Sophomore, and Junior years were probably some of the best years of my school career. I started to make straight A’s. My favorite teacher was Coach Griffin because he actually challenged us. I spent most of the time hanging out with James, Patrick, David, Ethan, and Codi. We started our awesome band, Rushin’ Roulette, and got several gigs. Unfortunately, this was also the time that I started dating. The girls cause nothing but trouble and distractions. But I think I have done a good job of keeping my head straight. I became better and more involved in sports. Although we never got as far as I wanted to in football, I had a lot of fun playing it and learned more about it. Basketball and baseball slowly came along also.

Chapter 11: Let’s Take A Vacation.

Our family would always take a vacation to Orange Beach on Labor Day weekend. My parents, grandmother, aunts, and cousins would get a condo and stay for 3-5 days. I don’t remember too much about the trips. I remember my Aunt Jackie taking my out deep in the ocean on a blow-up raft and crying when I got salt water in my nose and mouth. We would also go on business trips with our mom and dad to Destin or Gulfport. Once we even got to go to Disney World. I had a lot of fun there. I made friends with Chip and Dale, they were cool. I was only too scared to ride one ride. But James was scared of the 3-D movies.

Chapter 10: I’m Really In Love This Time.

My first serious mistake, I mean girlfriend, showed up in the 10th grade. Her name was Stephani Hodge. She was in the 9th grade at the time. I met her through Callie, which was the first sign of the mistake. We dated for ten months kind of off and on. I wasted much time and money on her. Thankfully God took her away from me after ten months. He sent her to Eutaw Alabama. Although we tried to make it work, it really wasn’t worth it. We broke it off and I was upset for a while, probably more because of the $130 ring that got thrown out of a car window than losing her. This made me a little smarter and a lot cheaper for future relationships.

Chapter 9: My Interests.

Now during all of this, what did I do for fun? I’ve always enjoyed fishing and hunting. I would always beg my brothers and dad to take me fishing. It would usually work, but not all the time. In about the 8th or 9th grade I started playing guitar. I eventually learned myself how to play it and the bass pretty decently. We started having band practice pretty regularly for fun. We’d waste our time at night by either walking around town aimlessly with a video camera or watching a movie somewhere. But now that we have cars, we ride around, go to the movies, or bowl.

Chapter 8: Middle School.

I’m finally in junior high. This is when I started to turn into an athlete. Although I was still kind of awkward, I was able to make a couple more friends. But this is also when I had a bad temper. I got in several fights with Henry, Stephen, and Landon. These were my first years to play football, and I began to love it. I still didn’t have much interest in the ladies. I was slightly struggling with my schoolwork. I had A’s and B’s instead of my usual straight A’s. I finally grew out of my fat though.

Chapter 7: I Wish I Could See Jeannie Again.

The only person I’ve ever really lost is Jeannie Grisham. It seems like James and I would go hang out with her every afternoon. She actually didn’t seem to mind us coming over too much either. We’d always sit on the porch and talk, mostly about music. She enjoyed collecting guitars and would sometimes play them. It was the night of a Catfish Festival about 6 years ago that she died I think. Her husband, friend, and she were on their way home one night when the friend fell asleep driving. Her husband was slung out of the truck and ran over. He died instantly. Jeannie died in the hospital several days later. The driver survived. I don’t know what my life would be like if this hadn’t happened, but I did lose a good friend.

Chapter 6: My First Girlfriend.

I was a fortunate one. I never had a girlfriend in elementary. I guess my handsomeness had not quite yet reached the extremely high level that it is at today. But I did have a secret admirer in the sixth grade. It was Lindsey Smith. But I was a smart one from the get-go. I knew better than to get caught up in girls. I slipped up in about the seventh grade, when I met a girl in Cleveland. I think we dated for a week and have been pretty good friends ever since.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Chapter 5: I Grew Up Here.

The neighborhood I grew up in is about as good as it gets. We live right in the middle of all of our friends. Keeton was just across the block. Zach and Jared were around the corner. Dansby lived right behind us. Ethan, Leigh, and Taylor were all just a couple of blocks away. We were always able to ride bikes and play spotlight or football. We could always make a little money selling lemon-ade. We may not have known everybody, but everybody knew us.

Chapter 3: Suddenly, I was here.

Well, greatness has finally entered the world. What now? What can you expect from a cute little red-headed, freckle-faced kid? I don’t really know. I can’t remember too much from my early childhood. I remember hanging out with James, occasionally going down the street to hang out with Zach or Keeton, crossing the ditch in my backyard to hang out with Dansby, and carrying around a blanket until I was in like the second grade.

Chapter 4: School Bells and More School Bells.

I guess elementary school was fun. I was a little scared when it began, but I got used to it. I was terrified of the second grade when Mrs. Kathy Gilmer was teaching. I remember from first to third grade trying to dig under the playground fence to escape. We had it mapped out. Charlie Ellison used his superior battlefield intellect to plan a route to his dad’s shop which supposedly wasn’t too far away. Needless to say, we were never successful, for we were usually stopped by the teachers yelling at us. My fourth through sixth grade years were when I was chubby. My cute little round self was also Mrs. Vance’s little biologist. I was and still am so proud.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Chapter 2: Before I Were, There Was………

As I previously stated, my parents are Jake Michael Bellipanni, Jr. and Joy Barnes Bellipanni. My parents brought into this world five of these most perfect boys on this planet. Jake Michael Bellipanni, III was the first to come. Eleven months later, Matthew Barnes Bellipanni arrived. Then two years later, Mark Allen Bellipanni came along. James and I show up ten years later, but we’ll talk about that more in the next chapter.

My father grew up in Indianola, Mississippi. He is the son of Jake Michael Bellipanni, Sr. and Mary Correro Bellipanni. My father had an older brother, James Bellipanni, who died in a hunting accident before I came along. He also has a younger sister, Antoinette Bellipanni. They grew up with the large Italian Bellipanni and Correro families. My grandfather had twelve brothers and sisters. My grandmother died when my dad was around fifteen. We have spent much time visiting my great aunts and uncles in Indianola and Memphis.

My mother grew up in Tutwiler, Mississippi. She is the daughter of Anne Barnes and the late Joe Barnes who died in a car accident shortly after we were born. She has an older brother, Brad Barnes, and three younger sisters, the twins, Jacquanne and Joanne Barnes, and Amy Barnes. Currently I think my uncle lives in southern Mississippi somewhere. My twin aunts are in Cleveland, along with my grandmother. And the youngest is in Sunflower, Mississippi.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Chapter 1: Who I is?

My name is Joel Meyer Bellipanni. I am the son of the greatest parents ever, Jake and Joy Bellipanni. James and I are the end of a set of five boys. We have three older brothers, Michael, Matthew, and Mark. Our parents might have well named us Luke and John since that's the joke our dad uses to introduce us.

We call the house at 404 Lee Avenue our abode. It is a nice home, not too big, not too small, but just right. I even have my own room.

I enjoy doing anything outside. Yardwork, fishing, hunting, running, tennis, golf, basketball, football, and baseball are all quite fun activities that I do. As long as the sun is shining I will be trying to find something to do outside. I like to consider myself an athlete, but if you watch me play sports you may just call me a football player. Although I'm decent in everything else, football is where I excel. In other sports I just use football-style to pass as an athlete. I think I may give college football a try, but it might not work out. I want it to be a sport that I love for the rest of my life.

But when it rains I entertain myself with music. I enjoy music, listening and playing. I play guitar and bass. I play in the band Rushin' Roulette and the SMASH Band. I secretly plan on becoming a country music star though. Okay, maybe not, but it could happen, I just haven't tried yet. I will try to keep music in my life for as long as possible.

My career choice will be in the engineering field. I plan to go to Holmes Community College, and from there, Mississippi State. During my college years I hope to find which area of engineering I will be happiest in.