I got back in touch with a great friend from high school recently. We talked about all the great times we had, and laughed really hard. Just her laugh brought back memories. I was talking with husband about our different friends, and I realized what my teen years would have been like without the great friends I made in junior high and high school.

Growing up, my best friend and I were really close and we were a lot like each other. When we got into junior high, she started shoplifting. I tried it once (classic peer pressure situation - I stole some eyeshadow) and I hated it. I hated how nervous I felt before, I hated how guilty I felt afterwards. My friend didn't have the same problem with it, because she started with make-up and moved up to clothes, and took stuff pretty regularly. A group of us were interrogated by the Dayton's Shoplifting Police because Heidi (name has been changed to protect those who Google their own name) stole a swimsuit. I had to sign some form that stated I intended to shoplift. I didn't, I just wanted to get out of there.

That was a not a death-blow to our friendship, though. I just decided not to do it again, and I didn't. Heidi could make her own choices. What was a problem was Heidi kept bringing me to these parties and ditching me and I'd end up bored out of my mind talking to some drunk guy named Bob slurring "I come to parties like this so I can meet a nice girl like you" or some other drunk guy, probably named Mike or Steve, who kept singing "Laura Bora fa fee fora, da dee zora. Loh-ra." and thinks he clever.

This is boring, ugly crap. It felt dark, greasy, lame, and mind-numbingly boring (I know there were kids in high school who drank and had fun, but that wasn't my experience). I had other friends at school and church friends who were not into this kind of scene, and after the episode with the Laura-Bora guy, I decided not to hang out with Heidi anymore. There were other issues going on with her, too, but I don't think I need to get into the gritty details.

With my church friends (and school friends) I had a blast in high school. We went to stake dances, Super Saturdays, hung out at our houses, went to high school dances, we ran around Valley Fair, we had a blast at Youth Conferences, we went dancing at Widget's (a Chuck E. Cheese, I kid you not, that was turned into a dance club on the weekends), we went to the movies, had so much fun at girls camp, we ran around the mall, we went to Ragstock, we hung out at Perkin's, we went to concerts, we went to Second Avenue in St. Cloud, we just had fun. Some of it was silly or whatever, but it was always so much fun. I just laughed my head off with these people.

None of us got drunk. None of us slunk off into bedrooms with people we shouldn't have. Sure, we made out in parked cars. We followed guys home when we probably shouldn't have (the guys would always say, "Come to a party" which was pretty funny 'cause there was never a party - one time we were all sitting around at one of these "parties" and this one guy bursts out "Who wants to make out with me? Any one of you. Right now." Yeah, that didn't work). But it never got dark or heavy. It never got too stupid, ugly or boring.

If I hadn't had the great friends I did, it might not have been as easy for me to shrug off the loser high school scene. I'm so glad I did.