When I think back to high school, I am amazed with how different all of my friends were. I did not hang out with only one group of friends. I was friends with people from orchestra, swimming, cooking classes, seminary, sign language, working in the cafeteria, and Christian club, amongst other things.
When I first went to junior high, in 9th grade, Janelle and I became immediate friends. We were both crazy. We took classes together through high school, had study groups together, talked about boys, had insane adventures with squirt guns, and worked together as telemarketers. I have so many happy memories from playing with Janelle.
Before my first day in high school, my mom told me to talk to everyone and not decide who was going to be my friend just by looking at them. Before my first class, I was finding my locker and there was a girl putting stuff in her locker just four away from me. She didn't seem too intimidating so I decided to be her friend first. Her name is Charity. It turned out that we had multiple classes together that year. We stayed good friends through high school.
I knew who Lauren was but didn't really start hanging out with her until our senior year. Lauren was such a crack up and I wish we had played more before senior year. She was always so easy to talk to and made me look at the positive side of things. She was always serving other people and made me feel so good about myself.
One day, the four us went out to lunch together. We were usually pretty hyper, and that's how it was that day as well. We came up with our own... club? We never really decided what we were. But we called it CeLJ, because of our initials. When we got back to campus after lunch, we started writing, "CeLJ" in the dust on car windows. We made the rule that you were only allowed to write your own initial. So we all had to be there together in order for it to work.
For graduation, I had shirts made for each of us.
We are all married now. The three of them married boys from Westwood. I never would have predicted that. We have not been very good at keeping in touch, but from what I hear of them, they all seem to be very happy. I am so glad I had such amazing friends in high school.
5 comments:
I remember your little "club", and I remember that last picture. Friends always make for great memories
That's a great post...it makes me want to take a trip down memory lane. What inspired you to write it?
Emily, you have no idea how much this post means to me. It's totally late here and I was going to go to bed but instead decided to check the blog and I am so gad I did. I wore my CELJ shirt the other day and was wondering if you guys still had yours or ever wear it. I always think of all the fun times we had when I wear it. We had SO many good times. I really am so grateful to have good friends like you. I know you're about to have baby2 and are going to be way busy but really, let's do a better job of staying in touch. I'd love to just call and chat with you sometime! :)
Haha! I just looked through the pictures again. Remember how we went to that "pool" party at Scott's and were the ONLY ones in swimsuits and our swim-shorts?! Haha!. That was awesome!
Olivia - I wrote about this because I think about these girls a lot and I want to remember our story.
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