Happy Memories

After my blog post yesterday, I feel like I need to give some blog time to another childhood friend. (And yesterday's post was a downer, I need a better one to lighten it up in here a little.)

Like I mentioned, my mom and I moved in with her boyfriend (now my stepdad) when I turned 8. I went into the 3rd grade as the new girl. I didn't seem to fit in anywhere, and when I never seemed to have trouble making friends before, now I felt alone. I tried making friends with the girls I shared a desk with at school, but they weren't always very nice to me.

But in 4th grade, everything changed again. My mom and stepdad were now engaged. I had a new teacher who was very nice and made me feel like part of the class, not like the outcast I felt like before. I was making friends. Halfway through the year, I even had a boyfriend (although in 4th grade, boyfriends were a secret). At the time, I was "best friends" with a girl named Stacy. That would last about a year and a half. More importantly, I became friends with Jessica Treece.

Jessica and I had our ups and downs, but as the years passed, our friendship became closer.

In 5th grade, my supposed best friend Stacy challenged me to a fight, because then the cool kids would let her into the popular crowd. When that day came, I drug my feet as much as possible going to recess. It wasn't that I was afraid of fighting her, instead I just didn't want to fight a friend. We went to the middle of the track away from the playground. She had all the popular kids standing on her side, and a huge group of people. I had only a few people on my side, including my little boyfriend, and Jessica.

The fight didn't last long. We circled around for a while, then I pinned her arms behind her and climbed up on her back. I was trying to pin her to the ground, but I was quite a little kid, and didn't have the weight to do it. Then a teacher came over and we had to go to the office. We didn't get in trouble, partially because our old 4th grade teacher vouched for us.

But that ended that friendship, not officially, but we never really hung out after that. She had made her choice. Instead, I hung out with Jessica. I remember sitting in the playground helping her make models of UFOs for her presentation for her advanced placement class.

In 6th grade, we went into middle school. It was hard getting adjusted to the bigger school and different style of classes. My mom had a baby. Mostly, I didn't see many of my old friends, and some had even moved away. But at this point we were both in the advanced placement classes, so I got to see Jessica all the time.

That doesn't mean it was all peachy. The friends that Jessica and I sat with at lunch decided that they didn't like Jessica. They said mean things about her, and convinced me I shouldn't be her friend. They wrote a sort of break up letter for me and gave it to Jessica.

I still feel bad about it. I should've never let them convince me to do that to her. I betrayed Jessica then, and I broke her heart. I saw what I had done, and regretted it, and chose Jessica over the other girls.

In 7th grade, Jessica had a crush on one boy, and I had a crush on another, and the two of them happened to be friends. When it came time to dissect frogs, we had to be in groups of 4, and managed to get ourselves hooked up with them. The 4 of us, plus another one of their friends, worked together on projects for the rest of middle school. We made knights armor for medieval times out of cardboard. We made a video about Alaska. We were silly and giggly and high on sugar.

Sometimes the boys did their own thing, like making a tv show called BABS (made from their initials). So we did ours, we made a radio show named JAMS (Jessica and Michelle show). We'd play silly music (a lot of stuff from Dr. Demento) and ramble on about silly things. We had an episode named Chemicals where we read the labels on the backs of personal hygiene items like lotion and hair spray.

In high school, our group of friends just got bigger, and we worked on several episodes of the XYZ Files (a ripoff of the X files). In one episode, Willy Ketchum and Agent Q (Jessica) were tracking The Chameleon, who could hide himself in his surroundings and stole candy from babies. The Chameleon took a mall rat hostage (that would be me), and the detectives saved the day. We made many more episodes, and they were always a blast.

When we took a family vacation to Sea World, Jessica came along. After high school, Jessica and I took a trip up to Wisconsin to go to the Renaissance Faire. We couldn't find the place, and decided to stop at a gas station for directions. Jessica was driving, and she turned into the gas station, heading straight for a median. I said, "median," but she drove right over it. I said, "I said 'median'!" She replied, "Well if you would have said THINGY!"

After stopping in the gas station, we found out that the Faire was only open on the weekends. So we decided we weren't just going to go back home after driving for so long. We went back to Chicago instead and ended up in the Field Museum and stopped by the Observatory. We had a blast!

After that, we both got boyfriends, and our time together dwindled. The boyfriends became our husbands, and life, well, happened. I moved 200 miles away. I am happy I moved, I love it in Bloomington, and there's only 2 things that make me regret moving: Jessica, and my sister. I do wish I was up there so I could spend more time with them.

Jessica mentioned maybe coming down to visit later this year. I hope she can. We could go to the Indianapolis Zoo. Of course I've been there before, but it will be so much more fun with her there. Or we would have a ton of fun at the Children's Museum.

At any rate, Jessica is a true friend, and one that I couldn't see my life without.