My high school wish

As Kaelyn grows older by the minute I start to look ahead to her future. What will her school years be like? What will she be like in grade school, high school, college? My wish for Kaelyn is that she has some of my high school experiences.

Let me explain. A friend of mine from high school and I keep in contact and we were talking once about our high school days. We referred to ourselves as "band geeks". We played in the marching band, the concert band etc. As far as I know, the school in general didn't call us "band geeks" but that's what we called ourselves. We were a tight group, much of the band was friendly and within the band were groups of even closer friends. Most of my friends came from the band and that made sense because we spent a lot of time together practicing, at games, at competitions etc. You hear a lot about peer pressure. Kids feel pressure to do drugs to drink etc. My friend and I were discussing how we never even FELT that pressure. No one invited us to the parties where they drank! No one asked us to do drugs! I guess they knew what the answer would be. We didn't even know who drank or who did drugs. When we heard rumors years later we'd be like, oh really?! We had no idea so and so drank back then!

My wish for Kaelyn is that she can avoid any pressure like that that you hear so much about in the media. There is much about my high school experience that I would change or improve, but that's one thing I can't say I missed out on. I never felt ANY peer pressure to do bad things.

My group of friends were quite reckless. We would rent movies, come over to my house to play pool, go bowling, go to a movie, perhaps even go mini-golfing on a really big day. My family moved across the state after my freshman year in high school. The room I had in our new house had glow in the dark stars ALL over the ceiling. When my family first moved in we thought, how tacky! And then I slept in the room for the first night and was like COOL!!!! It was so neat. It looked like the full sky above me. The person that put it up had even put constellations in there. At least the big and little dippers. Or so I thought! Now, this is how my group of friends spent our time. They'd come over to my house, we'd go up to my room, lay with our heads in a circle, turn off the lights, and gaze at the stars. I must admit, that freaked my dad out because there WERE boys in the group. We were all upstairs in my room with the lights off. My dad sent my mom up to check on us once and she turned the lights on to see us all laying on the floor, heads in a circle, pointing out fake constellations. Worries sidelined!

I want Kaelyn to have such friends. Friends she can do silly things with and be a KID with. Not anyone she has to worry about asking her to drink, do drugs, be stupid. Just people she can enjoy and never have to wonder what they may try to entice her with next...other than a bowl of popcorn or some chocolate, that is.

By the time Kaelyn hits high school I'm sure the world will have changed completely. Cell phones were just coming on the scene when I got to high school. A few people had those bag phones in their cars. Computers were just becoming huge, the internet was spreading. Can you imagine what will change by the time my almost-one year old hits high school? But one thing will never change...good friends. If Kaelyn can have that, high school will breeze by and she'll be off to college in no time. Goodness, did I really just age my under 1 year old to adulthood in one sentence?!