Friends

I graduated from a relatively small high school compared to many of my friends now in a small town. When I was growing up, I remember that all I wanted to do was get out of Walterboro. Now that I'm a parent and a little older, I realize that Walterboro wasn't such a bad place to grow up. I had some really great friends to hang out with and we did some really fun things. I've got some really great memories of football games, Spring Dance, Prom, Jr/Sr weekend, Jeffries Blvd., Saddleclub parties, and even Rice Festival.

Recently I was asked to be on my reunion committee. For some, that brings total dread, but I really look forward to seeing what everyone is doing now, what their little families look like, if they did all the things they set out to do, and if we would still be friends today. Some look at reunions like coming home to face some non-existent demon. When I left high school, I think I shut off most of the bad memories I carried and kept only those that truly mattered....good friends and family. Those fights over who was chasing whose boyfriend and yada yada were gone like the wind.

This summer I got to hang out with my 2 best high school friends and some other great girls at one of our friend's homes. We stayed up until 1 am gabbing about all the people we had known, if we had seen them recently and our own families. I had so much fun! It was nice to see that even now, I would have chosen to be best friends with them all over again.

Now, as Blake enters high school, I wish all the same things for him. I want him to have great friends like I did and to have some good memories to share with them and with his future family. Some of us were lucky enough to have been raised in small towns and lived to tell the tale. Some of us are just trying to escape the small town with our sanity intact. Some of us learned that some of life's greatest lessons started in a small town and we grew from there.