The Old Gang and Me

Interesting box ... the clay piece is a self-portrait, probably from sometime in elementary school. I think I made my lips gigantic on purpose. The plastic thing sticking up in the back is my name plate from a company I worked for back a few years ago. The horse painting is one of those things where I don't know where I came from - I've just always had it. Similar to the blocks I blogged about last, I used it in my Barbie house, as a large painting that dominated the living room. There's a shell of unknown origins, which has now joined the others in the bathroom, and a cork and a screw top. Those got thrown away - I'm not sure why I had them.

But the photographs are of my 'group' from my freshman year. The one on the left was taken during our freshman year of high school, when we were very close. The one on the right is the same six people, tho sitting in a different configuration, four years later, sometime around our graduation.

When I arrived in high school, I hadn't gone to the feeder middle school, so I knew absolutely no one. By the end of the day, I'd found a fun, nice set of girls who were friends and were accommodating. I hung out with them initially, but I also found several other girls who, like me, had not gone to the feeder middle school. Two of them, A and M, had gone to a different middle school and recently moved, just like me. The other, L, had been home-schooled until this point.

I wrangled two of the girls from that group I'd met on the first day away and suddenly, there were six of us. Three of us were in band together, some of us shared classes, but I think what really interested us was we were all social misfits. A had a lot of energy, same with P (from the initial group), though of a different sort. L was adjusting to going to school, M was from a different racial background from the rest of us. J (also from the initial group) was sort of finding her place - she and I became the closest, but she left school in our junior year.

The six of us hung out at lunch, after school, weekends, holiday breaks, and all that summer. But when we got back to school that fall, things were a little different. We started to move off in other directions, pursue friendships that were closer to our own interests. M and J and I stayed close, but the others drifted apart from us. These things happen, and I wasn't especially hurt by it. I still feel privileged that for one year I got to be a part of such a strong and supportive group.