CeLJ

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.