Memories: Part I. (It's a long one, folks...sit down.)

After a big surprise decision on Payton's part and long drive to Toledo this evening, I made another long drive home...ALL. BY. MY. SELF! I loved it!

As I lost my Ohio radio stations and began searching for something new to listen to, I came across a song that flooded my mind with memories. Isn't it weird how you can hear just one or two seconds of a song and you KNOW the song. And you remember the moment or the event that sealed that song into your memory? You can almost transplant yourself back to that setting and feel the emotions all over again?

For me, that song was Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band's "Turn the Page". Hearing just the first couples seconds transplanted me back to high school...probably a Sophomore I think. It was after a football game and I was sleeping over at Michelle's house. Her dad had picked us up from the game and we stopped to get pizza on the way home. I remember pulling into her neighborhood when this song came on the radio.

It was obvious this was a great song for her dad, yet being only 15 years old, I had no idea who this was and had never heard the song before. It wasn't music my parents played, I knew that! He turned that music up so loud, and rolled down the windows on the truck. When we got to the house, the song wasn't quite over, so we went around the neighborhood a few times at 11pm with the stereo blaring until the song was over with him singing the whole time! I couldn't believe somebody's dad did things like this! Not my parents! Not my dad! I thought, "Michelle has one great, very cool Dad!!"

For whatever reason, that moment stuck with me. The song, the smell of the pizza, the emotions, everything. I doubt Michelle or her father remember that moment even.

But as I was listening to the song, and all these memories and this story came flooding back to me in 30 seconds, I think about Michelle. We were great friends back then. We were those friends who "got" each other when no one else did. Along the way though, Michelle and I lost our friendship. That's what happens with teenage girls when boys come between them, I guess.

It's a shame really. I remember our last face to face conversation. And I remember the phone call that ended it all. We weren't arguing, we just decided that because our boyfriends didn't get along, we should distance ourselves. Silly now looking back since neither of us are with those guys. But we made that decision with 16 year old brains.

So we lost contact, and just in the last year have we finally reconnected 11 years later. (I'm so glad we did, Michelle. I look forward to meeting up with you very soon.) Ok...so take this journey with me; song spurs memory of her dad's antics, then my friendship with Michelle, then the end of friendship. This leads me to thinking about current friendships. All of this in two minutes.

I starting thinking about what a friend was back then in high school. And what a friend is now. They couldn't be further apart, could they? I have more thinking to do on it, but I'll write more tomorrow.