Tonight I’m having a party at my house where I am giving away French Fries. I’m doing this because 20 years ago I burned down my parents house while making French Fries.

No I’m not joking. I do celebrate this event. Not that it was a good thing that I burned my parents house down. It was not. I celebrate it, because that event had next to the bad results also good results. And over the years I came to value the good effects over the bad ones.

For me the most important reason why I could see this as a positive event was the way my parents reacted when I first saw them back.

They hugged me, instead of being mad at me.
I hope that if my kids ever screw up in their life, I have the energy to do the same.
The hug told me: I had failed, yet I was not a failure.

The second most important reason: I learned to not worry about what people think of me. My life is about me, not about them.
And yes that was because of all the shit that was told over me in that period. Both by people I didn’t knew and people that I thought were friends.

Update: Here are some more pictures