Reuben, Lil Bill & Billy Ray

Last week the biggest problem I had to solve was how to stay cool in the hot sun. I know, u feel sorry for me.

Well, it seems the Dominican Republic had a solution called a "cool tub". Not to be confused with a hot tub.

I met some interesting people in the cool tub. I don't know their names but I will can tell u what I called em. One guy looked just like Reuben Studdard from American idol so I called him Reuben. Another guy was from Poland and his friend was from the Ukraine so that's how I referred to them. The last guy had a striking resemblance to the cartoon character based on Bill Cosby called Lil Bill, so we called him Lil Bill.

We were all having a great time in our new cool tub community then Reuben realized everyone had a name except me. Since I don't resemble anyone famous so they were struggling, but then Reuben made the parallel to my facial hair "soul patch" and the facial hair of Billy Ray Cyrus. That is all it took, from then on, every time I saw my new cool tub friends, they called me "Billy Ray".

My point: people love community. It doesn't take long to connect with people and create memories but it does take an intentional effort. I will never see these people again but they will be forever in my memory. I don't even know their real names but I will always remember our cool tub community.

To create great memories, you don't have to share a cool tub of water full of who knows what - but u do have to share life.