I didn't get my license until I was 17 and a Junior in high school. When I was practicing to get a drivers license, my dad bought me a little car. It was a Subaru and a stick shift. He didn't even attempt to teach me how to drive it. He turned around and bought a little Renault. I loved that little car. I drove it into the ground.
After that, I haven't had much luck with cars at all. Some problems were my fault, and some were not. After the Renault died, I had already learned to drive a stick. I took the Subaru and drove it until the muffler didn't work any more. I would drive it through campus and set off car alarms on all of the other students' nicer cars. After the Subaru, and when I was a Sophomore, I ended up buying a Ford Escort Station Wagon. I loved that car. But alas, it wasn't meant to last very long. I drove it for over a year and a half. During that time, it had the "Imaginary Problems." It would die, and then, an hour later, start right back up. A mechanic finally figured out, it had some kind of equalizer valve problem. After that, it ran well.
Then, it kind of gets wierd. My parents decided that I should by a better car to get me back in forth to the hospital, which was in Indianapolis, and I was in Terre Haute. My dad had me come look at a Pontiace Sunfire, which soon became know as the "StartFire." I didn't really think I should buy that car. I just had a bad gut feeling about it. It was a reposessed car at a local bank. I don't even know how my dad found it. When we were test driving it, it ran out of gas, a couple blocks away from my parents' home. I kept telling my dad, "I don't think I should buy that car. I don't feel good about it!" Well, my dad talked me into buying it. Within a couple weeks, it was developing "Imaginary Problems." I would drive it around the city, and it would just die. Then, I'd get it towed somewhere, and the mechanics would get it to start right up! That is one of the most frusturating things that can ever happen to a person! Like, "Yes Ma'am, your car problems are all in your mind!" Finally, we decided to take it to a transmission shop, and had the transmission rebuilt. My dad had to take a loan out for that. (He felt bad for talking me into buying the car, so, he covered the loan.) Having a transmission rebuilt is one of the most expensive things you can have done on a car. After we got the transmission fixed on that car, after a couple weeks, it still started dying for no reason. I finally gave the car to my brother to keep for a while. He's a mechanic. I borrowed a little Geo Metro from my parents. While I had that car, it got broken into. It was in my back yard, and it must have been a group of teens. They broke the steering collum to try to hot wire it. Yes, a crappy Geo Metro. Some Terre Haute teens need to get lives, or learn to steal better cars! It took a couple weeks to get that car fixed. Then, my brother finally figured out what was causing all of the "Imaginary Problems" on the Startfire! The spark plug wires were faulty! Why had none of the previous mechanics thought to check that! He fixed the car. I had two cars for a short period of time in Terre Haute. I loaned the Geo Metro to a friend. The insurance had replace the CD player in that car for a nicer one. The car got broken into AGAIN in front of his house. So, I had to make another police report and get the CD player replaced. That was just a couple months after I had had that car fixed and CD player put in.
I kept driving the Startfire. One day I was driving home from Bloomington on 46, and the whole computer system on the car failed! I was stuck in front of these random houses by myself. This was before cell phones were a necessity of life. Luckily, one of the people was nice, and let me use there phone to make some phone calls. I had to have a friend come pick my up and have the car towed away! It was such a frusturating experience! That was an expensive fix!
After I got it fixed, I was ok with that car for a while, when the muffler went bad on it. That was the last straw for that car. I started looking at cars at dealerships. That's it! I had to have a car with a warranty!
I started looking at cars and when to the Chevy dealership. The car salesman recommended this Hyundai Elantra. It was such a cute little car! I took it for a test drive. I loved it! The salesman said to me, "This is the car I put all of my women in!" I think he meant, his wife, daughter, sisters, ect. It was just funny the way he worded it! I bought that little used car and had my first car payment. It was such a fun car! Power everything with a Sun/Moon roof, plus, it still had a warranty. Hyundai warranties are some of the best out there if you didn't know. After a couple months, the battery started dying on me... Well, I kept leaving my lights on because it didn't have a little bell on it that said they were on. So, that messed up the computer. The car dealership was so nice to me, and the problem was covered by warranty, including my rental car! A year or two later, a window motor went out. That was fixed! A year after that, the other one went out. They fixed that too! That warranty was awesome!
In August of 2004, I man backed into they drivers side door of the Elantra, and then, said it was my fault. He was screaming that at the cop, when the cop laughed in his face, and said, in no way could this have been my fault. His insurance still didn't pay up for the accident.
On Thanksgiving of 2004, I was on the way to Lafayette from the Chicago Suburb, on I-65, when I rearended a car. It had snowed the night before, and there was black ice on the road. Plus, there were eight accidents within a two mile stretch of I-65. I was so sad to leave my little car and the Wilcott Dairy Queen/Gas Station. That was the last time I saw that little car. My sister even had to go clean it out for me in Lafayette, because I was living in the Suburb.
The car was "Totalled" and all the money that I got from the insurance, went to pay off what was left of the loan.
I borrowed my parents' Subaru station wagon to get back to the Suburb. Boy, were those Toll booths scary! Everytime I went through one, the car died! (This was right before everyone had the I-Pass.) In December, I started searching out a car. I went to one place, and nobody came out and talked to me. I went to the lot next door, and I had bought a Neon before the end of the day. It was a blah car. It didn't suit me at all. It was a dark gray, it was big and clunky. Even though the car was barely a year old, it still had a tape deck! Why a 2004 would still have a tape deck? I don't know.
I kept the Dodge Neon until April. That's when I started seeing the little neon green Chevy Aveo on the Chevrolet lot. I drove by it three or four times that week, and then, I went into the dealership to look at it. I traded my Neon in for this little Aveo. Probably not the smartest thing I've ever done, but I loved that car!
Two weeks after I bought the car, I was driving home on I-65 one morning, and hit a dear! I got that fixed. Then, a couple months after that, I hit some wooden pallets a truck had dropped on the road on Highway 41 going back to Indiana. It seemed something has happened to that car every year since I bought it; hail damage, tire/rim damage, attacked by a truck tire blowing in front of me, a rock flying off a truck and cracking my windshield, all sorts of things.
Well, about a month ago, I bought two new tires for the car. Two weeks after that, my boyfriend was driving it and hit a huge pot hole. We ended up on I-70 with a flat tire and a destroyed rim. My brother came and fixed that for me. Then, this last Saturday, I turned a corner, and the engine started making a crazy noise! My cute little Keylime Green Aveo now sits at the dealerships service center. This is the month I'll be just about paid off on my car!
Cars have always been a frusturating thing to me. I want one I can enjoy driving, and I'm not going to lie, color of the exterior is important to me! I'm just sad my poor little car broke down right before I am going to pay it off! I just hope it doesn't cost me an insane amount of money to get the thing fixed. I just want my little Aveo back. I. has been out of town, so, I've been driving his car. I don't really fit in his car. I know that sounds wierd, but I do fit in my car. I don't want to have to buy a new car for a couple more years. I was just planning on paying mine off and driving it until it doesn't work anymore.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Friday, May 27, 2011
The Indy Adult Show Choir
I've always been obsessed with dancing and singing. When I moved back to Indiana, a friend I have known since high school asked me to go to a show choir competition with him. From that day forward, I swore we were going to start a group of people that were going to do show choir for fun!
A couple of years later, we started working on it. Then, one day at dinner with friends, we found a place we could rehearse. The next mission was to find people to sing with us! We created a Facebook page for the chior, and started inviting everyone we knew. Then, they started inviting everyone they knew.
We had our first rehearsal, and abouth 20 people attended. We sang through a bunch of music. As rehearsals went on, we started having less and less people. We learned a couple songs and learned choreography. The main problem was, so many people were in community theater and kept doing shows. I could never get a show scheduled for our group that didn't conflict with something us. We finally took a break for summer.
D. and I came back after summer, and we decided we would hold auditions. We felt bad doing that, but thought that would encourage more commitment from people. Two people showed up. Those two people are actually still in the choir to this day. Then, we went from there. We had a whole four or five people in the choir. Then, we decided to do more advertising. More people came and dissappeared. Finally, I ended up with a mostly consistant group of ten. Then, D. decided that, with the family issues he had going on in his life, he couldn't be involved anymore. From that night on, I became the groups choreographer, also. We did finally make it to our first performance last December. We had about sixty people show up and watch us!
After the Holidays, we started again in January. We started preparing for our Spring Show. Again, there was the interesting dynamic of people showing up in the begining to see what we are, and as the song says, We are Who We are. People wouldn't come back. We again had a consistant group of eleven. Then, a couple things happenned, and we were down to nine. We did our Spring Show a couple weeks ago with the nine, and again, had about sixty people show up!
We are again on Summer Hiatus. We will start again on September the 1st! My question is, how do I find people that aren't involved in community theater that have a higher commitment level? We meet once a week, until the couple weeks before the show. It's not that much of a commitment! Really! I've tried different outlets of finding people. A lot of people show up and expect it to be like high school show choir. It's not. It's just a fun group that gets together to dance and sing. We have fun doing it!
We advertise on web sites like, Facebook, Indymommashup, Craigslist, Indianaaudtions, we have our own blog, ect. Where else is there to advertise something like this? I've also tried to connect with one of the other local community choir people in town, who said he would send people my direction. I didn't hear anything from him after that. We also did flyers and papered Mass Ave. and Starbucks all around town. That's actually where a few of my people came from last year.
The thing is, right around the time I started really advertising for the choir, a local radio station DJ decided to start his own choir. So, I couldn't call that station and advertise.
How can I make this choir grow? I also need a consistant accompanist that would play on a volunteer basis.
Any Ideas? I'm open!
A couple of years later, we started working on it. Then, one day at dinner with friends, we found a place we could rehearse. The next mission was to find people to sing with us! We created a Facebook page for the chior, and started inviting everyone we knew. Then, they started inviting everyone they knew.
We had our first rehearsal, and abouth 20 people attended. We sang through a bunch of music. As rehearsals went on, we started having less and less people. We learned a couple songs and learned choreography. The main problem was, so many people were in community theater and kept doing shows. I could never get a show scheduled for our group that didn't conflict with something us. We finally took a break for summer.
D. and I came back after summer, and we decided we would hold auditions. We felt bad doing that, but thought that would encourage more commitment from people. Two people showed up. Those two people are actually still in the choir to this day. Then, we went from there. We had a whole four or five people in the choir. Then, we decided to do more advertising. More people came and dissappeared. Finally, I ended up with a mostly consistant group of ten. Then, D. decided that, with the family issues he had going on in his life, he couldn't be involved anymore. From that night on, I became the groups choreographer, also. We did finally make it to our first performance last December. We had about sixty people show up and watch us!
After the Holidays, we started again in January. We started preparing for our Spring Show. Again, there was the interesting dynamic of people showing up in the begining to see what we are, and as the song says, We are Who We are. People wouldn't come back. We again had a consistant group of eleven. Then, a couple things happenned, and we were down to nine. We did our Spring Show a couple weeks ago with the nine, and again, had about sixty people show up!
We are again on Summer Hiatus. We will start again on September the 1st! My question is, how do I find people that aren't involved in community theater that have a higher commitment level? We meet once a week, until the couple weeks before the show. It's not that much of a commitment! Really! I've tried different outlets of finding people. A lot of people show up and expect it to be like high school show choir. It's not. It's just a fun group that gets together to dance and sing. We have fun doing it!
We advertise on web sites like, Facebook, Indymommashup, Craigslist, Indianaaudtions, we have our own blog, ect. Where else is there to advertise something like this? I've also tried to connect with one of the other local community choir people in town, who said he would send people my direction. I didn't hear anything from him after that. We also did flyers and papered Mass Ave. and Starbucks all around town. That's actually where a few of my people came from last year.
The thing is, right around the time I started really advertising for the choir, a local radio station DJ decided to start his own choir. So, I couldn't call that station and advertise.
How can I make this choir grow? I also need a consistant accompanist that would play on a volunteer basis.
Any Ideas? I'm open!
Thursday, May 26, 2011
I'm conducting an experiment!
I'm conducting a small experiment. I'm starting a vlog on http://www.youtube.com/ . A vlog, for those that might not know, is a video blog or video journal.
My channel is: http://www.youtube.com/user/pechin6
I've already have four official vlogs up. I also have some older videos on there of some other stuff! If you get a chance, go ahead and watch, subscribe, thumbs up, all of that fun youtube related stuff. I'll keep posting them. Hopefully, they will improve in quallity as I go. I'm really new at the video editing thing.
I'm doing this for my own entertainment. Maybe it will entertain you too!
My channel is: http://www.youtube.com/user/pechin6
I've already have four official vlogs up. I also have some older videos on there of some other stuff! If you get a chance, go ahead and watch, subscribe, thumbs up, all of that fun youtube related stuff. I'll keep posting them. Hopefully, they will improve in quallity as I go. I'm really new at the video editing thing.
I'm doing this for my own entertainment. Maybe it will entertain you too!
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
How do you meet friends? The "Adult" Years
How did you meet your college friends? What happend to your friends that you had met previous when you started college? How did you meet friends after college? This is my perspective.
When you get to college, at least at the college I went to, you're "forced" into new friendships. I mean this in the nicest way possible. For freshman, the first whole week of living in the dorms, you meet tons and tons of new friends. There are meet and greets and tours to go on with groups of new people. There's a RA (Resident Assistant) who's there to create commorodory on her floor between the inhabitants. Also, being part of the music department, there were mixers and lunches to "force" us to meet others in the music majors. There were mentors who helped us meet others in the department.
My college roomate was someone I was friends with in high school. She was a Theater Major. I ended up going to a lot of theater events and meeting theater people my first year along with all of the other people I was meeting. My voice teacher hated that I was hanging out with theatre people! The thing is, my roomie and my other friend that were "Theater People" were more straight laced than any of the music people I was friends with. In fact, I came to a lesson one day, and I got this lecture from her about how "all of the theater people smoked and drank," so, I should be hanging with my fellow voice majors. Secretly, most of them were drinking and smoking right under her nose. (Hopefully, I'm not ratting people out... no names are being mentioned!) I almost starting laughing in her face when I got "the Lecture" about theater people. See, the theater majors were just more open about the fact that they did all this crazy stuff and had all of the crazy parties.
By the end of my freshman year, I was hanging out with more music/vocal majors and trying to decide if I was going to join a sorority. Both of my really good friends that were "theater" friends did formal rush at the beginning of Freshman year and joined the Delta Gamma sorority. I really liked those girls, and they were always very kind to me. I had a music friend that joined Sigma Kappa sorrority second sememster freshman year, and they were always really nice to me. All of my music friends were joining Sigma Alpha Iota, which is a music Fraternity for women. So, I had choices to make. Which group would I join, if any? Which one could I afford? Was I really going to concider joining one when some people called it, "Paying for your friends?" I did informal rush with Delta Gamma first semester and Sigma Kappa second semester. First semester, I didn't join Delta Gamma. I was uber expensive! I could be wrong, but I think I remember is being about $50 a month or something. When I rushed Sigma Kappa, I was suffering from an awful first semester of college, I was asked to come back first semester the next semester and rush again when my grades came back up. I participated in Sigma Alpha Iota's Rush activities second semester, but again, grades where a problem. I worked really hard second semester and got my grades up. I came back after the summer and decided to join Sigma Alpha Iota. The thing with SAI was, dues were by semester, not monthy. At the time, they were about forty bucks a semester, which was way more affordable. All of the members were music people. They all seemed to be willing to have study sessions for all of the music classes.
By the end of my sophomore year, I was starting to think that I was going to change my major from a double major in Music Ed/Performance, to Music Business Administration. There was a group that was for the Music Business Majors called, the Music Industry Association. I started hanging out with that group when I was thinking about changing my major. Again, I met a few of my really good friends in this group. I also met people who were doing things in the same area that I was working towards.
On top of all of that, Music Majors did almost everything together. We partied together. We ate together in the dining halls and on the weekends. We studied together.
My Junior year, I had an apartment with three other girls. They were all in my sorority, and three of the four of us were music majors. On November 4th, I got the call for my kidney transplant. That day, I dropped out of school. (Probably the wrong thing to do, but that's a whole other story.) I finished the rest of the year of 1999, living with my parents and recouperating from the surgury. I finally moved back into my apartment right before New Years Eve.
When I got back, my roomies seemed to be at odds, and I was kind of in the middle. Then, I ended up "choosing a side." The other problem was, dropping out of school put me way behind. Most music classes are on a year rotation. I had to wait until fall to retake a lot of the classes I had dropped out of. It's also hard to remember what I had learned to lead up to those classes the previous year. This whole situation made my academic career a couple years longer. I'm a horrible student in the first place.
College dragged on and on. I finally went on my internship with my company in January of 2004. I moved up to the Chicago Suburb to work for them. It was mentally,emotionally, and physically exhausting. I called my friend M. everyday. I didn't start hanging out with my co-workers in the end of February or March. Then, I started making friends and getting social interaction. I was hanging with my co-worker's social circle, which had an interesting dynamic. (I still talk to a lot of them to this day!) They were a lot of fun to hang out with, and they also got me into DDR (Dance Dance Revolution, a video game). I lost a lot of weight playing that game. In September of that year, I finally had saved enough money to bring my cat to the suburb and pay the pet deposit. My cat is still with me and one of my best buds!
In March of 2005, people from the LDS church started seeking me out in the area. That's when I met L. and her family. They adopted me right away! The first day I met them, they told me I was coming to dinner! I said, "Umm... Ok." The circle of Young Single Adults was pretty tight up there. They were all pretty kind to me on the most part. M. always tells me, it takes about two years of living in an area to create a social circle. Well, I was coming up on my two years in the suburb and had met some great people. Then, I was offered a position in Indiana, closer to my family. I said yes to the position and moved.
I took my niece with me to help me move. My boss and his wife from the suburb with their daughter drove the moving truck. I had arranged with some members of the local YSA's from church to meet us at the new apartment. E. helped me set up the apartment that weekend to a livable state. Then, I took her back home.
Then, it was just me and my cat. I tried to go to Family Home Evening (FHE) that Monday which was Halloween. I got there at 7:30, because I that's what time it started in the suburbs. Nobody had told me it started at 7! I was late. They were already done with the lesson, and they were playing a game. It was a really short game. Then, they played volleyball. I soon learned, that volleyball was the only activity they really did. I hate volleyball! I stopped going to a lot of things because it always ended in Volleyball. It took me a long time to finally go to church on Sunday. I realized that I wasn't going to find a real friend right away like I had in the suburbs. I was actually becoming a bit heart broken by that fact! I quickly learned, people already had their groups and places, and I really wasn't going to fit into any of them. Not that anyone was really down right mean to me, but I didn't really feel welcome for a long time.
I started reconnecting with people that lived in the area that I had known from college. They became my main go to group.
Finding friends as an adult is a whole different story once you're done with college!
When you get to college, at least at the college I went to, you're "forced" into new friendships. I mean this in the nicest way possible. For freshman, the first whole week of living in the dorms, you meet tons and tons of new friends. There are meet and greets and tours to go on with groups of new people. There's a RA (Resident Assistant) who's there to create commorodory on her floor between the inhabitants. Also, being part of the music department, there were mixers and lunches to "force" us to meet others in the music majors. There were mentors who helped us meet others in the department.
My college roomate was someone I was friends with in high school. She was a Theater Major. I ended up going to a lot of theater events and meeting theater people my first year along with all of the other people I was meeting. My voice teacher hated that I was hanging out with theatre people! The thing is, my roomie and my other friend that were "Theater People" were more straight laced than any of the music people I was friends with. In fact, I came to a lesson one day, and I got this lecture from her about how "all of the theater people smoked and drank," so, I should be hanging with my fellow voice majors. Secretly, most of them were drinking and smoking right under her nose. (Hopefully, I'm not ratting people out... no names are being mentioned!) I almost starting laughing in her face when I got "the Lecture" about theater people. See, the theater majors were just more open about the fact that they did all this crazy stuff and had all of the crazy parties.
By the end of my freshman year, I was hanging out with more music/vocal majors and trying to decide if I was going to join a sorority. Both of my really good friends that were "theater" friends did formal rush at the beginning of Freshman year and joined the Delta Gamma sorority. I really liked those girls, and they were always very kind to me. I had a music friend that joined Sigma Kappa sorrority second sememster freshman year, and they were always really nice to me. All of my music friends were joining Sigma Alpha Iota, which is a music Fraternity for women. So, I had choices to make. Which group would I join, if any? Which one could I afford? Was I really going to concider joining one when some people called it, "Paying for your friends?" I did informal rush with Delta Gamma first semester and Sigma Kappa second semester. First semester, I didn't join Delta Gamma. I was uber expensive! I could be wrong, but I think I remember is being about $50 a month or something. When I rushed Sigma Kappa, I was suffering from an awful first semester of college, I was asked to come back first semester the next semester and rush again when my grades came back up. I participated in Sigma Alpha Iota's Rush activities second semester, but again, grades where a problem. I worked really hard second semester and got my grades up. I came back after the summer and decided to join Sigma Alpha Iota. The thing with SAI was, dues were by semester, not monthy. At the time, they were about forty bucks a semester, which was way more affordable. All of the members were music people. They all seemed to be willing to have study sessions for all of the music classes.
By the end of my sophomore year, I was starting to think that I was going to change my major from a double major in Music Ed/Performance, to Music Business Administration. There was a group that was for the Music Business Majors called, the Music Industry Association. I started hanging out with that group when I was thinking about changing my major. Again, I met a few of my really good friends in this group. I also met people who were doing things in the same area that I was working towards.
On top of all of that, Music Majors did almost everything together. We partied together. We ate together in the dining halls and on the weekends. We studied together.
My Junior year, I had an apartment with three other girls. They were all in my sorority, and three of the four of us were music majors. On November 4th, I got the call for my kidney transplant. That day, I dropped out of school. (Probably the wrong thing to do, but that's a whole other story.) I finished the rest of the year of 1999, living with my parents and recouperating from the surgury. I finally moved back into my apartment right before New Years Eve.
When I got back, my roomies seemed to be at odds, and I was kind of in the middle. Then, I ended up "choosing a side." The other problem was, dropping out of school put me way behind. Most music classes are on a year rotation. I had to wait until fall to retake a lot of the classes I had dropped out of. It's also hard to remember what I had learned to lead up to those classes the previous year. This whole situation made my academic career a couple years longer. I'm a horrible student in the first place.
College dragged on and on. I finally went on my internship with my company in January of 2004. I moved up to the Chicago Suburb to work for them. It was mentally,emotionally, and physically exhausting. I called my friend M. everyday. I didn't start hanging out with my co-workers in the end of February or March. Then, I started making friends and getting social interaction. I was hanging with my co-worker's social circle, which had an interesting dynamic. (I still talk to a lot of them to this day!) They were a lot of fun to hang out with, and they also got me into DDR (Dance Dance Revolution, a video game). I lost a lot of weight playing that game. In September of that year, I finally had saved enough money to bring my cat to the suburb and pay the pet deposit. My cat is still with me and one of my best buds!
In March of 2005, people from the LDS church started seeking me out in the area. That's when I met L. and her family. They adopted me right away! The first day I met them, they told me I was coming to dinner! I said, "Umm... Ok." The circle of Young Single Adults was pretty tight up there. They were all pretty kind to me on the most part. M. always tells me, it takes about two years of living in an area to create a social circle. Well, I was coming up on my two years in the suburb and had met some great people. Then, I was offered a position in Indiana, closer to my family. I said yes to the position and moved.
I took my niece with me to help me move. My boss and his wife from the suburb with their daughter drove the moving truck. I had arranged with some members of the local YSA's from church to meet us at the new apartment. E. helped me set up the apartment that weekend to a livable state. Then, I took her back home.
Then, it was just me and my cat. I tried to go to Family Home Evening (FHE) that Monday which was Halloween. I got there at 7:30, because I that's what time it started in the suburbs. Nobody had told me it started at 7! I was late. They were already done with the lesson, and they were playing a game. It was a really short game. Then, they played volleyball. I soon learned, that volleyball was the only activity they really did. I hate volleyball! I stopped going to a lot of things because it always ended in Volleyball. It took me a long time to finally go to church on Sunday. I realized that I wasn't going to find a real friend right away like I had in the suburbs. I was actually becoming a bit heart broken by that fact! I quickly learned, people already had their groups and places, and I really wasn't going to fit into any of them. Not that anyone was really down right mean to me, but I didn't really feel welcome for a long time.
I started reconnecting with people that lived in the area that I had known from college. They became my main go to group.
Finding friends as an adult is a whole different story once you're done with college!
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
The Mind Shift
There's an episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" in season five, episode 21 called "Weight of the World." In that episode, Buffy explains that in one moment, she had made a huge realization about the battle about to come. She knew that she was going to lose and she mentally gave up. This mind shift comes to her while she was doing the mundane task of putting a book away on a shelf. Do we have those moments? Moments when we mentally just give up on something? After those moments, most people just start "going through the motions" of life. They aren't trying to get the most out of what they are experiencing.
When I lived up in the suburb. I had met a guy who had just got back from a mission. We had so much in common and there was chemistry. This all happened a couple months before I transfer ed to Indiana. I really liked him. After the move, we still talked on the phone and emailed on a daily basis. Out of nowhere, he starts sending me emails about not wanting to date someone that lived so far away. The weired thing was, he never really said me, he just kept saying "someone." Well, he and his friend came to visit me from the suburbs. We all had a great time and did some local things. Before he left, he told me he liked me too.
The next week was rough. It's the week my brother died. I remember calling the guy and talking to him when I found out. He seemed like he was pretending to listen to me, but disinterested at the same time. I thought it was really strange. Within a couple days after that, he sent me an email stating, he was actually dating someone else. She was from Wisconsin, and they were getting more serious. I was in shock! I felt like he had been leading me on for over four months! I just emailed him back and said, "I'm done." I never emailed or talked to him again after that. He emailed me the next month to tell me he and the girl were engaged. I never responded.
After over a year of living in the new area and going to the singles branch, I had maybe been on a couple friendly dates. Nothing serious. There was a guy that seemed kind of interesting, and I called him and asked if he'd like to go to an event. He said he was out of town. He called me back in a few days and asked me to do something else. We dated for about two months, and he never even tried to hold my hand! On our first date, he made a very homophobic comment about how he liked Elton John until he came out as a "Flaming Homo!" We were on another outing with a bunch of the YSAs when he saw two guys together, who he decided were gay. He started making comments to another guy in out group, "Bubba over there likes you! Bubba wants you!" and some other very derogatory comments. I only caught part of this, but enough to realize what he was doing. The next week, out of nowhere, he asked me to go see the movie "I Now Pronounce you Chuck and Larry." I was thinking, why the heck would he want to see this movie, especially after all of the comments he had made previously! After the movie, I felt like this opened the door for me to say how inappropriate I felt it was to say things like that. Well, some interesting things came out in the conversation. The next week, he "broke up" with me by saying, "I was dating you just to date somebody." And that was that.
That's when my mind shift began. Why should I date within the "safe" confine of the church after the way I had been treated by the guys in previous relationships. That's when I gave up on dating church members.
I did go out with one other guy after that. At the end of the night, he invited himself into my apartment, after I had already said, "Good night," and "Thank you!" He just kept staying. Then, out of nowhere he says, "Do you know what NCMO is?" I say, um, no. "It's a non-committal make out session!" After about five minutes, I announced that I was turning into a pumpkin, and he had to leave!
That totally confirmed my decision that none of these men were who I want to spend "Time and All Eternity" with. I had given up on meeting guys at church. Where was I going to meet anyone if I didn't meet him there? I didn't want to date a guy I met at a bar, aside from the fact that I don't drink. I didn't plan on joining any sports clubs to meet people. So where does someone like me meet people?
There's also the mind shift that can be positive and change a person's life for the better. I've had a lot more of these mind shifts in my life then the negative kind. I had a mind shift in February last year, the month after my robbery. I wanted to meet a companion. My sister had recommended using plentyoffish.com numerous times to meet other people outside of my circle. I set up an account and profile on there. I just kept getting weirdos. you know the ones who rote sentences like this hey you smile cute write me! (Yes, like that, grammar spelling, and all!) That's when you don't know if the person actually is uneducated or is just so lazy, he can't write a complete sentence. On plentyoffish.com, I was getting weirder and ruder responses. It's kind of funny, because plentyoffish.com is actually advertising in the "Hold it Against Me" Britney Spears video and Kesha's "We Are" video.
I was eating dinner with a group of friends when they started talking about meeting people online. One of my friends met her husband online through the yahoo dating site. Another friend said that he was seeing someone he had met on OKcupid.com. I had never heard of that site before. He explained it was a free site that actually does a lot of testing and matching.I decided to try OKcupid.com. I had only been on there about a week when my current boyfriend contacted me. He sent me an actual email with content and punctuation! That was a total plus! That was just over a year ago!
I'm not saying that all LDS men are terrible and not datable! There are some that are very datable. They just never seemed to ask me. And like I said, I did go on a few friendly dates, and still are friends with those guys to this day. It just seems, the guys that I found or found me relationship material, had a lot of issues! I just knew after six or seven years of attending numerous young single adult functions and praying about it, I was not getting any where in my goals for my personal life.
When I lived up in the suburb. I had met a guy who had just got back from a mission. We had so much in common and there was chemistry. This all happened a couple months before I transfer ed to Indiana. I really liked him. After the move, we still talked on the phone and emailed on a daily basis. Out of nowhere, he starts sending me emails about not wanting to date someone that lived so far away. The weired thing was, he never really said me, he just kept saying "someone." Well, he and his friend came to visit me from the suburbs. We all had a great time and did some local things. Before he left, he told me he liked me too.
The next week was rough. It's the week my brother died. I remember calling the guy and talking to him when I found out. He seemed like he was pretending to listen to me, but disinterested at the same time. I thought it was really strange. Within a couple days after that, he sent me an email stating, he was actually dating someone else. She was from Wisconsin, and they were getting more serious. I was in shock! I felt like he had been leading me on for over four months! I just emailed him back and said, "I'm done." I never emailed or talked to him again after that. He emailed me the next month to tell me he and the girl were engaged. I never responded.
After over a year of living in the new area and going to the singles branch, I had maybe been on a couple friendly dates. Nothing serious. There was a guy that seemed kind of interesting, and I called him and asked if he'd like to go to an event. He said he was out of town. He called me back in a few days and asked me to do something else. We dated for about two months, and he never even tried to hold my hand! On our first date, he made a very homophobic comment about how he liked Elton John until he came out as a "Flaming Homo!" We were on another outing with a bunch of the YSAs when he saw two guys together, who he decided were gay. He started making comments to another guy in out group, "Bubba over there likes you! Bubba wants you!" and some other very derogatory comments. I only caught part of this, but enough to realize what he was doing. The next week, out of nowhere, he asked me to go see the movie "I Now Pronounce you Chuck and Larry." I was thinking, why the heck would he want to see this movie, especially after all of the comments he had made previously! After the movie, I felt like this opened the door for me to say how inappropriate I felt it was to say things like that. Well, some interesting things came out in the conversation. The next week, he "broke up" with me by saying, "I was dating you just to date somebody." And that was that.
That's when my mind shift began. Why should I date within the "safe" confine of the church after the way I had been treated by the guys in previous relationships. That's when I gave up on dating church members.
I did go out with one other guy after that. At the end of the night, he invited himself into my apartment, after I had already said, "Good night," and "Thank you!" He just kept staying. Then, out of nowhere he says, "Do you know what NCMO is?" I say, um, no. "It's a non-committal make out session!" After about five minutes, I announced that I was turning into a pumpkin, and he had to leave!
That totally confirmed my decision that none of these men were who I want to spend "Time and All Eternity" with. I had given up on meeting guys at church. Where was I going to meet anyone if I didn't meet him there? I didn't want to date a guy I met at a bar, aside from the fact that I don't drink. I didn't plan on joining any sports clubs to meet people. So where does someone like me meet people?
There's also the mind shift that can be positive and change a person's life for the better. I've had a lot more of these mind shifts in my life then the negative kind. I had a mind shift in February last year, the month after my robbery. I wanted to meet a companion. My sister had recommended using plentyoffish.com numerous times to meet other people outside of my circle. I set up an account and profile on there. I just kept getting weirdos. you know the ones who rote sentences like this hey you smile cute write me! (Yes, like that, grammar spelling, and all!) That's when you don't know if the person actually is uneducated or is just so lazy, he can't write a complete sentence. On plentyoffish.com, I was getting weirder and ruder responses. It's kind of funny, because plentyoffish.com is actually advertising in the "Hold it Against Me" Britney Spears video and Kesha's "We Are" video.
I was eating dinner with a group of friends when they started talking about meeting people online. One of my friends met her husband online through the yahoo dating site. Another friend said that he was seeing someone he had met on OKcupid.com. I had never heard of that site before. He explained it was a free site that actually does a lot of testing and matching.I decided to try OKcupid.com. I had only been on there about a week when my current boyfriend contacted me. He sent me an actual email with content and punctuation! That was a total plus! That was just over a year ago!
I'm not saying that all LDS men are terrible and not datable! There are some that are very datable. They just never seemed to ask me. And like I said, I did go on a few friendly dates, and still are friends with those guys to this day. It just seems, the guys that I found or found me relationship material, had a lot of issues! I just knew after six or seven years of attending numerous young single adult functions and praying about it, I was not getting any where in my goals for my personal life.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Natural Disasters and Personal Disasters
I'm sure we have all heard about the very large earth quakes and tsunami that have hit Japan last week. I started thinking about this and how this would effect so many lives. It also got me thinking about things in my life that I would consider personal disasters. What moment or moments in your life would you concider a personal disaster? It could be something as major as a car accident all the way down to a small thought process.
I'll start with my "car accident." Well, I've had a lot of litteral car accidents within a very short time period, but what I would call a definite personal disaster is the night I was robbed at gun point and tazered. I had gone over to my friend, B's house to watch a show and do laundry. When I came home, it was exactly midnight. I had come home this late or later numerous times before and never had any problems. I got home and parked my car next to my neighbor's truck. When I got out, I could hear two guys speaking spanish, which I do not speak. I thought nothing of it. Then, a guy walked out from behind my neighbor's truck holding a gun. He started threatening me with very heavilly accented english to stop moving. I had my purse on my arm and a large McDonald's cup in my hand. He yelled at me to drop the cup and give him the purse, which I did. Then, someone came up from behind me and wrapped his arm around my throat and stuck a tazer in my side. I jumped from the tazer, thinking "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!" This person was more violent and started threatening that if I didn't give him the money, he was going to kill me, aslo in a very heavy accent. I said, if I had any money, it would be in the purse. Then, they told me to shutup. They took my keys and started diggin through my coat pockets, which is where I had my cell phone. They took the cell phone. Then, the first guy started to climp through my car looking for something. The other guy blurted something out in spanish. Maybe he got spooked. They instructed me to get back into the car. The first guy said that I had to tell him my pin number or he would kill me. I lied. Then, he said, if I was lying, he would come back and kill me. They shut me in my car. They drove off in their van. I had no keys. I had no phone. I had nothing.
I imediately ran into my building and started pounding on my neighbor's door. She was a little freaked before she realized it was me. She called the policee for me. A police officer was there in minutes. He took my statement and gave me a case number/card. He said they had actually already pulled over a van in the area matching my sketchy discription. It wasn't the right van. While the cop was still there, we went and woke up another neighbor, whom I've known since the day I had moved in. She was in shock.
My neighbor had called the emergency maintnance line to get me a key to get into my apartment. I started thinking about it and realized, I had an extra apartment key in my car. My neighbor that I had lived by for a long time, gave me a cell phone she had minutes on to use to get ahold of... somebody.
After I got into my apartment, I was in shock. I started searching for phone numbers, I couldn't remember any for the life of me. I found one friend's guest list from a lia Sophia show I had done for her. I called her. I get her voicemail. By now, it's after 1:00am. She's probably asleep. I start searching for more numbers. I found my boss's number and reached him. I just tell him I would miss work the next day and why and hung up. I finally find an extremely old phone bill that has my parents' phone number on it. I call and my mom answers. I inform her to what happened. I get my sister's cell number from her. I call my sister a couple times before she answers. She decides she will drive the one and a half hour drive and pick me up. I pack and pack up my kitty and wait.
This was my life changing personal disaster. I have always been a confident single woman with hardly any fears. I was so trusting in the world. I had lived in my apartment for over four years. I had experienced one burglary before during the day. My door was kicked in and only my purse was stolen. The rest of my apartment was trashed because the burglars were looking for jewelry or money, which I have none of. I survived that with only a little bit of mental and emotional damage, but it wasn't enough to make me move out of the apartments. My neighbor across the hall from me was totally wipe out of most of her possessions. I just lost a purse with maybe ten dollars in it and all of my ID's and credit cards. I had gotten over the burglary.
I worked multiple jobs at the time, two of which required me to come home at all different hours of the night. I had never feared coming home late at night before. I had never feared a specific race before. I was always very open minded about everything. When two hispanic men, whom I could not see their faces because of they were wearing bandanas over them, attacked me, I made me fear hispanic men of their shape and size. In fact, just recently, two hispance men walked into the store. I welcomed them as I always welcome ever customer. One was about the shape and size of one of my attackers. He gave me an odd look. I almost ran to the back of the store and hid in the break room! After the thought crossed my mind, I reminded myself how ridculous that would be, and kept sitting where I was.
I know these thoughts are ridiculous. I'm sure someone else whose been through an attack of any kind would have the same kind of thoughts. I have since moved to a whole new apartment complex. Recently, we've been told to be careful due to burglaries that have happened during the daytime. That is how the whole thing started in the old apartment complex. I still have nights when I get home after dark, and I can't get out of my car. I have to call my boyfriend to come out and walk my in. I have nights when I have to force myself out of my car. Every car in the neighborhood is suspicious, because I don't recognize them all yet. I also know that I can't live my life in fear of a specific gender of a race. The two or three men involved, I think there was a driver also, have still not been caught, as far as I know. They have hit other apartment complexes in the area. They could still attack someone my current apartment complex, which is only a few miles away from my old one.
I just have to continue living. Everyone has these life changing disasters. The question is, how does one let it effect and affect his or her life? I'm thankful for my sister that picked me up at 3:30 in the morning. I spent a couple weeks on B's couch. I'm really thankful that he and his roomate let me stay for that long. After that, I tried to move and and move back home. Since it was the middle of January, it was hard to go back even during the day time to pack clothes and to check on the kitty. It made me so nervous. After a while, the nervousness started to get better. I also met my boyfriend, which has helped me out a lot.
This is my disaster. I feel really sad for the people in Japan who have been dealing with the disasters since Friday, and that their disaster just continues with the over heating of the nuclear power plants. I also feel sorry for the people and children of Haiti who are still suffering from the earthquakes that happened on January 13th last year. Since this happened the same night as my robbery, it took me a while to realize how catastrophic the situation in Haiti was and is.
You can text JAPAN to 20222 to donate $10 to the Redcross. Respond yes to the next text to confirm.
I'll start with my "car accident." Well, I've had a lot of litteral car accidents within a very short time period, but what I would call a definite personal disaster is the night I was robbed at gun point and tazered. I had gone over to my friend, B's house to watch a show and do laundry. When I came home, it was exactly midnight. I had come home this late or later numerous times before and never had any problems. I got home and parked my car next to my neighbor's truck. When I got out, I could hear two guys speaking spanish, which I do not speak. I thought nothing of it. Then, a guy walked out from behind my neighbor's truck holding a gun. He started threatening me with very heavilly accented english to stop moving. I had my purse on my arm and a large McDonald's cup in my hand. He yelled at me to drop the cup and give him the purse, which I did. Then, someone came up from behind me and wrapped his arm around my throat and stuck a tazer in my side. I jumped from the tazer, thinking "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!" This person was more violent and started threatening that if I didn't give him the money, he was going to kill me, aslo in a very heavy accent. I said, if I had any money, it would be in the purse. Then, they told me to shutup. They took my keys and started diggin through my coat pockets, which is where I had my cell phone. They took the cell phone. Then, the first guy started to climp through my car looking for something. The other guy blurted something out in spanish. Maybe he got spooked. They instructed me to get back into the car. The first guy said that I had to tell him my pin number or he would kill me. I lied. Then, he said, if I was lying, he would come back and kill me. They shut me in my car. They drove off in their van. I had no keys. I had no phone. I had nothing.
I imediately ran into my building and started pounding on my neighbor's door. She was a little freaked before she realized it was me. She called the policee for me. A police officer was there in minutes. He took my statement and gave me a case number/card. He said they had actually already pulled over a van in the area matching my sketchy discription. It wasn't the right van. While the cop was still there, we went and woke up another neighbor, whom I've known since the day I had moved in. She was in shock.
My neighbor had called the emergency maintnance line to get me a key to get into my apartment. I started thinking about it and realized, I had an extra apartment key in my car. My neighbor that I had lived by for a long time, gave me a cell phone she had minutes on to use to get ahold of... somebody.
After I got into my apartment, I was in shock. I started searching for phone numbers, I couldn't remember any for the life of me. I found one friend's guest list from a lia Sophia show I had done for her. I called her. I get her voicemail. By now, it's after 1:00am. She's probably asleep. I start searching for more numbers. I found my boss's number and reached him. I just tell him I would miss work the next day and why and hung up. I finally find an extremely old phone bill that has my parents' phone number on it. I call and my mom answers. I inform her to what happened. I get my sister's cell number from her. I call my sister a couple times before she answers. She decides she will drive the one and a half hour drive and pick me up. I pack and pack up my kitty and wait.
This was my life changing personal disaster. I have always been a confident single woman with hardly any fears. I was so trusting in the world. I had lived in my apartment for over four years. I had experienced one burglary before during the day. My door was kicked in and only my purse was stolen. The rest of my apartment was trashed because the burglars were looking for jewelry or money, which I have none of. I survived that with only a little bit of mental and emotional damage, but it wasn't enough to make me move out of the apartments. My neighbor across the hall from me was totally wipe out of most of her possessions. I just lost a purse with maybe ten dollars in it and all of my ID's and credit cards. I had gotten over the burglary.
I worked multiple jobs at the time, two of which required me to come home at all different hours of the night. I had never feared coming home late at night before. I had never feared a specific race before. I was always very open minded about everything. When two hispanic men, whom I could not see their faces because of they were wearing bandanas over them, attacked me, I made me fear hispanic men of their shape and size. In fact, just recently, two hispance men walked into the store. I welcomed them as I always welcome ever customer. One was about the shape and size of one of my attackers. He gave me an odd look. I almost ran to the back of the store and hid in the break room! After the thought crossed my mind, I reminded myself how ridculous that would be, and kept sitting where I was.
I know these thoughts are ridiculous. I'm sure someone else whose been through an attack of any kind would have the same kind of thoughts. I have since moved to a whole new apartment complex. Recently, we've been told to be careful due to burglaries that have happened during the daytime. That is how the whole thing started in the old apartment complex. I still have nights when I get home after dark, and I can't get out of my car. I have to call my boyfriend to come out and walk my in. I have nights when I have to force myself out of my car. Every car in the neighborhood is suspicious, because I don't recognize them all yet. I also know that I can't live my life in fear of a specific gender of a race. The two or three men involved, I think there was a driver also, have still not been caught, as far as I know. They have hit other apartment complexes in the area. They could still attack someone my current apartment complex, which is only a few miles away from my old one.
I just have to continue living. Everyone has these life changing disasters. The question is, how does one let it effect and affect his or her life? I'm thankful for my sister that picked me up at 3:30 in the morning. I spent a couple weeks on B's couch. I'm really thankful that he and his roomate let me stay for that long. After that, I tried to move and and move back home. Since it was the middle of January, it was hard to go back even during the day time to pack clothes and to check on the kitty. It made me so nervous. After a while, the nervousness started to get better. I also met my boyfriend, which has helped me out a lot.
This is my disaster. I feel really sad for the people in Japan who have been dealing with the disasters since Friday, and that their disaster just continues with the over heating of the nuclear power plants. I also feel sorry for the people and children of Haiti who are still suffering from the earthquakes that happened on January 13th last year. Since this happened the same night as my robbery, it took me a while to realize how catastrophic the situation in Haiti was and is.
You can text JAPAN to 20222 to donate $10 to the Redcross. Respond yes to the next text to confirm.
Monday, March 14, 2011
How do we meet real friends? The Early Years
Where did you meet your closest friends? Did you meet them in High School, College, Church, a bar, a social club like the Y? How did they become your closest friends? What made you say, "I want to hang out with this person?"
I can remember in Elementary school having a best friend. We met when I was four, and we lived in the same neighborhood. The only year we were in the same class together was third grade. Our relationship hit some rough patches that year, but we still continued on being friends. Then, in the fifth grade, my family moved across town, or to the next town I guess. It became harder to see each other. Our parents did drive us back and forth some, but a lot of our contact was over the phone. We would spend hours over the phone talking to each other... or watching tv together in silence. In that year, I started having a really hard time with friendships in school. I started developing and was made fun of constantly for it. But I survived. I had also made a friend in the apartment complex that was a couple years younger than me. She liked to dance, so, I would get my little boom box out and set it on the step, and we would make up dances. After a year in those apartments, we moved again, but we were in the same city. Nine weeks after the school year started, when I was in sixth grade, we moved again. That time, I changed schools. That year, I was probably the most depressed I had ever been. On top of that, I was probably getting sicker with my health issues and nobody realized it.
In those apartments, there were a bunch of kids. Now, my father had lost his job at the time, so, these apartments were based upon income. A lot of these kids had broken homes with parents that had minimal to no education. It also seemed that they had no discipline in the home. Therefore, they thought that it was ok to treat other people with disrespect. The worse part about living in these apartments and dealing with these kids was getting on the bus every morning. That was enough to make me not want to go to school. The bus driver had no control over the sitation what so ever. I was constantly teased and made fun of. After a while, a few self preservation things kicked in. At first, I would try to use a Walkman and wear headphones on the bus to ignore every one around me. But that stopped working when a kid decided the next thing to do was to start pulling on my head phones and break them. I remember his name was Elmer. He constantly picked on me and tortured me. After the head phone situation, I got off the buss and came home bawling. After that, my dad started walking me to the bus stop, which didn't really help the situation, because all of the bad stuff happened on the bus. So, my next act of self preservation was, not going to school. I started missing at least one day a week of school. This was getting to the point where teachers would say, "She's not here, must be Tuesday!" I finally decided I would start going to school more consistantly when I got an ear infection. Well, my parents decided I shouldn't go to school with an ear infection and didn't wake me up in the morning. They called my in sick. That day, the principal called and talked to my father. I have no idea what the conversation was, but I'm pretty sure it was about my absences.
This is the first school I experienced what being "Popular" and "Unpopular" really meant. I did finally meet a real friend at this school. She would invite me over to hang out at her house after school and for sleepovers on the weekends. We would talk about things like, how does the "Popular" girl never where the same outfit twice?! She seriously never did! We also both enjoyed music and were in choir together. I sadly had lost touch with her soon after sixth grade when I moved back to the school I started middle school in.
I had tried to keep a few friends that I had met while I was going to school at the first middle school. One girl, whom I had known since fifth grade, still invited me to do things all the way through sixth grade. So, when I moved back to the school, I thought I would be able to hang out with her. I sat with her at her lunch table the first week, and learned some interesting things. She had a table hierarchy. It sounds crazy, but only certain people could sit right next to her. We had classes together where, we would sit next to each other. Then, she started some minor teasing. I would just blow it off. She's my friend. She doesn't mean any harm. I started making friends with other people in her circle, the ones I had things in common. I stayed friends with her until close to the end of eighth grade and middle school. By the end of the eighth grade, I realized that friendship had run it's course, and we were becoming two completely different individuals.
My freshman year of high school was like starting over completely with all of my relationships. You get to high school and you have all sorts of decisions that have to be made. What kinds of classes will you take? What kinds of clubs do you join? Will you participate in any sports? When I was a freshman, I wanted to do it all! I was in freshman choir. I was on dance team. I was in Orchestra. I was in drama club. I went to early morning seminary. I was active in the church youth group. I went with my elementary school best friend to her church group. I was in gymnastics. I'm sure there was more that I participated in, but this gives you the idea of how busy I made my life. Within this time, I had kept a couple friends from middle school and still hung out with my best friend from elementary school.
As a freshman, my friend that I had kept from middle school was in marching band. Now, marching band season is insanely busy, which is the first two or three months of the school year. I felt like I didn't get to see her very often. They actually went to state contest that year and did pretty well! So, I started over with making new friends. I met some people in the drama deparment. I started hanging out with them on a regular basis.
During my sophomore year, I got a job at a local pizza restaruant where my best friend from elementary school worked. I worked there all the way through high school. Her mother and boyfriend worked there also. During my sophomore year, I hung out with the elementary school best friend and the drama friends I had met the year before. I still hung out with the marching band friend also. We had a pretty good circle of friends that year. Towards the end of the year, I met a guy that I ended up dating until I graduated from high school and through the summer right before college.
I still talk to a lot of the closer high school friends to this day.
Making friends in college is a whole different story.
I can remember in Elementary school having a best friend. We met when I was four, and we lived in the same neighborhood. The only year we were in the same class together was third grade. Our relationship hit some rough patches that year, but we still continued on being friends. Then, in the fifth grade, my family moved across town, or to the next town I guess. It became harder to see each other. Our parents did drive us back and forth some, but a lot of our contact was over the phone. We would spend hours over the phone talking to each other... or watching tv together in silence. In that year, I started having a really hard time with friendships in school. I started developing and was made fun of constantly for it. But I survived. I had also made a friend in the apartment complex that was a couple years younger than me. She liked to dance, so, I would get my little boom box out and set it on the step, and we would make up dances. After a year in those apartments, we moved again, but we were in the same city. Nine weeks after the school year started, when I was in sixth grade, we moved again. That time, I changed schools. That year, I was probably the most depressed I had ever been. On top of that, I was probably getting sicker with my health issues and nobody realized it.
In those apartments, there were a bunch of kids. Now, my father had lost his job at the time, so, these apartments were based upon income. A lot of these kids had broken homes with parents that had minimal to no education. It also seemed that they had no discipline in the home. Therefore, they thought that it was ok to treat other people with disrespect. The worse part about living in these apartments and dealing with these kids was getting on the bus every morning. That was enough to make me not want to go to school. The bus driver had no control over the sitation what so ever. I was constantly teased and made fun of. After a while, a few self preservation things kicked in. At first, I would try to use a Walkman and wear headphones on the bus to ignore every one around me. But that stopped working when a kid decided the next thing to do was to start pulling on my head phones and break them. I remember his name was Elmer. He constantly picked on me and tortured me. After the head phone situation, I got off the buss and came home bawling. After that, my dad started walking me to the bus stop, which didn't really help the situation, because all of the bad stuff happened on the bus. So, my next act of self preservation was, not going to school. I started missing at least one day a week of school. This was getting to the point where teachers would say, "She's not here, must be Tuesday!" I finally decided I would start going to school more consistantly when I got an ear infection. Well, my parents decided I shouldn't go to school with an ear infection and didn't wake me up in the morning. They called my in sick. That day, the principal called and talked to my father. I have no idea what the conversation was, but I'm pretty sure it was about my absences.
This is the first school I experienced what being "Popular" and "Unpopular" really meant. I did finally meet a real friend at this school. She would invite me over to hang out at her house after school and for sleepovers on the weekends. We would talk about things like, how does the "Popular" girl never where the same outfit twice?! She seriously never did! We also both enjoyed music and were in choir together. I sadly had lost touch with her soon after sixth grade when I moved back to the school I started middle school in.
I had tried to keep a few friends that I had met while I was going to school at the first middle school. One girl, whom I had known since fifth grade, still invited me to do things all the way through sixth grade. So, when I moved back to the school, I thought I would be able to hang out with her. I sat with her at her lunch table the first week, and learned some interesting things. She had a table hierarchy. It sounds crazy, but only certain people could sit right next to her. We had classes together where, we would sit next to each other. Then, she started some minor teasing. I would just blow it off. She's my friend. She doesn't mean any harm. I started making friends with other people in her circle, the ones I had things in common. I stayed friends with her until close to the end of eighth grade and middle school. By the end of the eighth grade, I realized that friendship had run it's course, and we were becoming two completely different individuals.
My freshman year of high school was like starting over completely with all of my relationships. You get to high school and you have all sorts of decisions that have to be made. What kinds of classes will you take? What kinds of clubs do you join? Will you participate in any sports? When I was a freshman, I wanted to do it all! I was in freshman choir. I was on dance team. I was in Orchestra. I was in drama club. I went to early morning seminary. I was active in the church youth group. I went with my elementary school best friend to her church group. I was in gymnastics. I'm sure there was more that I participated in, but this gives you the idea of how busy I made my life. Within this time, I had kept a couple friends from middle school and still hung out with my best friend from elementary school.
As a freshman, my friend that I had kept from middle school was in marching band. Now, marching band season is insanely busy, which is the first two or three months of the school year. I felt like I didn't get to see her very often. They actually went to state contest that year and did pretty well! So, I started over with making new friends. I met some people in the drama deparment. I started hanging out with them on a regular basis.
During my sophomore year, I got a job at a local pizza restaruant where my best friend from elementary school worked. I worked there all the way through high school. Her mother and boyfriend worked there also. During my sophomore year, I hung out with the elementary school best friend and the drama friends I had met the year before. I still hung out with the marching band friend also. We had a pretty good circle of friends that year. Towards the end of the year, I met a guy that I ended up dating until I graduated from high school and through the summer right before college.
I still talk to a lot of the closer high school friends to this day.
Making friends in college is a whole different story.
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