I wont tell them your name...

Someone asked me to tell them a story about something I did in high school that was crazy. And so I started to think about myself in high school and my brain wasn’t flooded with the loneliness I felt nor was I reminded of the teenage angst I had but rather the few close friends I had when I was in high school and the stupid things we did.
My friend Kristin probably could have convinced me that the sky was purple and it was the reason we had to ditch our next class (generally the class following our lunch period.) Or maybe it was that I didn’t need convincing to know that whatever we did instead would be epic.

One particular morning as Kristin and I were walking to class from the lower parking lot of our ever massively sprawled out school I watched as Kristin pretty much ate dust and I can’t remember if she broke her zipper or if this was the time she tore her jeans. It was just before our first class and as she fell I remember laughing because she was carrying a Frappacino in her hand and I saw as she risked impact with her face to the dirt so that she would not break the starbucks glass bottle. Really, the fact that Kristin fell wasn’t the shocker; she would trip on a daily basis so it wasn’t like “remember that time you ate shit?” Because the answered for her would be “Which time?” it was that she stood up, looked at me and said, “Ugh, lets just go home.” So we turned around not even taking more than 15 steps onto campus and left.

Or how I was in the same spot as the fall incident when she approached me said, “My zippers busted, lets go get ice cream.” And again, I we left sliding into the seats of my ever-growing trashcan of a red Honda civic and bailing on yet another class.

It’s not that I’m all for ditching classes because I really did love school, it was a time in my life when I was able to focus on something that wasn’t my life. I could fade into the history lesson and be warped into whatever time period we spoke about. It was a time when I could slide into seat at the back of the class and slouch into my own little world and be safe from my real life. But there was something about the times Kristin and I were together that fills me with such joy and nostalgia.

Like the time we left class both dressed in black skirts and heels and decided that taking my 88 Honda civic off road would be the best idea we’ve ever had. Okay, in Hein sight I see why the car died. Would I have done it differently? I’m not sure, because wouldn’t it figure that the road we’re on out in the middle of Marana that happens to have less traffic would be the road that suddenly became I-10 when one afternoon after a rain I would get my car stuck in a wash. She’d warned me before I did it “That’s a wash” she said as I turned the wheel and within moments was spinning my tires and burring my poor “Putt-Putt” deeper into the sand.

While attempting to dig the car out or push it backwards we would duck behind the car whenever another car passed feeling like idiots for being stuck in the wash and unwilling to accept assistance until it became finally clear that there was no way my car was going to come unstuck and someone had to pull it out.

So maybe I wasn’t the most popular girl and maybe among an 800+ student body I seemed to melt into the unknown, but I was definitely somebody to the few friends I had and I looking back on my high school years I remember the funny moments spent with some incredible friends. Most of us survive high school because of the friends we have, I continue to survive life because of these same friends.