Revisiting the Class of '93

Day Eleven- Pictures of your High School friends that meant the most to you

Seriously? High School? Are we really going to go back that far?

For as open as I am about my life, and for as much as I have shared here, I have to admit that this is the first post that has ever made me uncomfortable. I think it is just the idea of posting pictures of people I haven't seen in 18 years that feels weird to me.

I didn't love High School. I didn't hate High School. It was just...High School. It had its ups and downs, but I can't say that I was even a little bit sad to walk away or that I ever missed it. I didn't even show up for Graduation or Senior Week. I was over it.

I did have some friends worth remembering along the way, and amazingly I even have a few pictures, crappy old scanned, photo album stained, pictures. These are all people that I have actually heard from since High School at some time, although it has been a long time since I have talked to most of them.

Let's start at the start, with Aura.

When I started High School I did not have any friends. No one was mean to me or even said anything to me. I was basically invisible. I started Middle School the same way, and eventually became friends with a girl named Carol. Right before 8th grade graduation she made a new best friend. The three of us tried to all be best friends, but you know how well that works. I was the old toy and eventually it was easier to make up reasons to be mad at each other so that we didn't have to try to be friends anymore. Girls are drama! Anyway, that left me flying solo when High School started. I sat alone and it was really no big deal, because I had done it before. After a few months Aura started to reach out to me. We went to church in the same building but were in different wards so I kind of knew her. Pretty soon we were joined at the hip. As the years went on we each made other friends, but none of my other friends were the same as her other friends. By the start of Junior year we were still friends, but didn't hang out much anymore. We stayed friends all the way through school though and I even went up to visit for a weekend in college since she was in Orem, Utah and I was in Cedar City. A year or so ago I heard from her again and we have e-mailed back and forth a bit, although not very consistently because I am bad at keeping in touch.

Me and Aura also tried out for Dance together and after I did not make it in 8th grade, 9th grade, or 10th grade, I FINALLY made it in 11th grade. I think it was GOOD for us though when not everyone made the team. I learned so much through perseverance. Here are me and Aura and the rest of our team at Cheer Camp.

After Aura and I stopped hanging out as much, I mostly hung out with these girls.

That last picture was taken at Disneyland the day after I got off of a 4 month restriction. I had not been allowed to go ANYWHERE or listen to music or talk on the phone. I was so happy to get out of the house. Why I dressed like a clown in those baggy striped Sesame Street pants, coupled with a black lace and denim jacket, the world may never know. But I remember thinking I looked cute that day.

Carly was the friend from this group that I was originally the closest to.

She was such a good friend to me. We met at cheer tryouts Freshman year and just got closer and closer through the years. She was so supportive of me, and I was such a depressed person a lot of the time back then. Eventually (at Disneyland actually) she met a guy and he took up all her time after that. We pretty much quit talking, but later kept in touch during college. She even wrote to me on my mission and came to my wedding. I still get Christmas cards of her adorable family every year.

Then I was briefly BFF'S with Diana.

One time we were walking through the mall and her mom spontaneously decided to get our pictures taken together. Funny!

On that same day that we were at Disneyland, Diana and I got split off from the rest of the group. We barely knew each other. She had come into the group while I was grounded. Maybe she was my replacement? By the end of the day we were great friends and hung out often for months. But she had always belonged to a different group of friends and we both eventually gravitated back towards the people we already knew.

And that is where Shawna comes in, although I had already been good friends with Shawna for awhile.

It seems like that day at Disneyland changed the structure of our little group for good. We met 4 boys there, strangely enough from our same town, but they went to the all boys school so we didn't know them. Carly and her sister, Corie started dating two of them. I was kind of out of the loop since I had gotten split off from the group that day, but Shawna liked one of the other guys and apparently the 4th one liked me, even though we barely saw each other before we all got separated. Joey and Shawna started to hang out, and since he was BFF's with Mark, the one who liked me, they set us up and the four of us hung out. The boys didn't last too long, but once Shawna and I started to hang out we never parted until I moved to Utah for college. Shawna was so much fun, and her family was so good to me. I stayed with them the whole summer before Senior year and her mom drove me to and from Summer School (because remember I had to make up my Junior year). Her mom cooked me vegetarian food at night, separate from what everyone else was eating. Her mom even gave me curfews and boy advice. I did not miss High School, but I missed Shawna and her family when I moved. We stayed in touch until it got weird and we didn't have anything to talk about anymore. I saw them at Target years ago. I saw Dona first, Shawna's mom. She had grown her hair long and lost a lot of weight. I was staring at her trying to decide if it was really her. Then I looked over and saw Shawna with her. We were just passing each other at that point and I panicked and kept walking. I felt so stupid, because they had meant so much to me, but I didn't know what to say. I really dread running in to people I used to know. It scares me so badly, and I hate that about me. But I hear from my Facebook using friends that she is doing well and married with 4 kids.

I should also mention my good friend, Stepheny.

We never hung out in the same crowd but we became good friends. We had English together in 10th grade, when I was an English superstar. Then we sat next to each other in English Junior year, when I was a waste of space. She kept trying to encourage me to give just a little bit of effort, since she knew I wasn't that dumb. On test days she would be reading me her notes and telling me answers before class, because she didn't want me to fail and she knew I hadn't done the work. She was way too good to me. She would drag me out of the house when I was mopey and we'd go to Denny's for cheese sticks, or we would take weekend train trips to San Diego. That is where her boyfriend lived and she would introduce me to cute college boys. She always told everyone I was her model friend, and I laughed because I didn't get much attention in High School from boys, but Stephehy thought I was pretty and told me all the time. Stepheny called me about 9 years ago right before she got married and we chatted for a long time. She ended up becoming an English teacher and taught at the same school where my stepdad was teaching.

As you can see, I changed girl friends way too often in High School and I learned that girls are fickle so I loved having guy friends. They don't talk about you when you leave the room, and if you make new friends, or they do, it is not a threat to your relationship. As the years went on, I hung out with more guys and my best guy friend was Damion.

We met in Drama. He was a year younger than me so we were in different drama classes, but my drama teacher put him on the prop crew for the play that I was student directing. He always told me he intended to hate me, but that I was totally different than he thought I'd be. We had an instant connection. Everyone in drama saw it and really pushed for us to date. I had a boyfriend, but everyone wanted me and Damion together. I loved hanging out with Damion. He was smart, he was a good writer and well read. He intrigued me. He was straight edge and I hadn't had any straight edge friends before. He shaved his head, except he left a queue growing on the top which I thought was unique and cool. He was so different than my cute trendy boyfriend, and I was drawn to him. He was interested in me, and I knew it, but he was my best friend and I needed it to stay that way. Damion outlasted the boyfriend, but even once we were single, we never dated. He later became good friends with Valerie after I moved away. She actually dated his little brother. The last time we talked was when I called to tell him where I was going on my mission, and I am not sure what we would have in common anymore, but I am so glad he was there when he was there.

And here are a few of my drama buddies.

That picture was for you mom. My mom had dinner the other night with my friend, Chet and his family. They are in the same ward. He was one of my two Mormon friends in High School. My mom LOVES gossip and is always looking for dirt even where there is none. She called to tell me how Chet was doing and kept trying to pry and see if we had ever dated. We did NOT, but he was a really good friend, and I knew you would like this picture of us hugging. I loved my drama friends. We didn't have your typical drama crowd. We had jocks and cheerleaders and all types of kids in drama who might not otherwise hang out, but we were all as tight as family in our little drama world.

As for boyfriends, heck no, I will not post pictures. Honestly, no one was interested in me AT ALL until Junior Year. I dated a little bit but only had two official boyfriends. One was the summer before Senior Year, and I don't know if he counts because he had another girlfriend that he forgot to break up with before he started dating me, and continued to forget to break up with until I found out and ended it. He graduated the year before me, but when he found out I was in night school Senior Year (again, making up for my flopped Junior year) he signed up so that he could see me again. We became friends again and he still pursued me (while still having that girlfriend) until after my first semester of college when she tracked me down. That was interesting. Maybe I'll tell you about it sometime.

Senior year I had a boyfriend, who I had been friends with for a long time. He had dated everyone I knew at some point in time so I always joked that I was the only one left. He had actually asked me out during Junior Year but I knew he only kept any one girlfriend for a month tops and I didn't want to lose him as a friend. When he came back around Senior Year, everyone warned me not to go out with him, but he was cute, so what the heck. We ended up surprising everyone and staying together until one week before graduation. The last time I saw him was when I was home from college for Christmas break (6 months after HS graduation) and it was almost just like old times, except that I had a boyfriend in college and he got married two days later, to the girl he dated right after he broke up with me.

And that is an overview of my social life in High School. Now please let's not go there again, okay?

Oh wait, I should also give a shout out to these guys, who where my BEST BEST friends in High School, and still are. Rock that mullet Jeff!

And Melissa!

Every other weekend I went to my dad's house. I would go back to school on Monday and hear all the good stuff I missed over the weekend, which could have been a real drag, but I had usually been off playing with my sis, Melissa and her friends. Me and Melissa are the same age and we were the best of friends. I was always so grateful to her for incorporating me into her social life on those weekends.

Today's soundtrack: These are Days by 10,000 Maniacs. This was my class song and I should have mentioned in my last post that I love 10,000 Maniacs. Although if I were to pick a song that more accurately fits that time in my life, I would choose Letter to Me by Brad Paisley. I have no interest in going back, but I would loved to have had the perspective I have now while I was there and I would definitely echo the words, have no fear, these are nowhere near the best years of our your life. Like I said, high school was okay, but life got better for sure.

Sheesh, that was LONG! If you don't make it through the whole thing, no worries. Even I don't have the patience to go back and read through it all, so hopefully it is coherent.