My Blasts From the Past

This Friday, after I go to the doctor, I am going to meet up with my YW leader from when we lived in Virginia. Janna & I always got along famously well. I am really excited to see her and catch up! Between this and a few other things going on, I have been thinking about different people who have crossed my path and had an impact on me, so I thought I would share a few. Note: not all of them had a positive impact, they just had an impact. Some even left scars. (forgive if I have blogged about any/all of them before, I didn't check before writing this).

Let's start with Tara C. Tara was 16 and in 8th grade with me. She was tall and had long blonde hair and was sturdy (not fat, but not skinny and could definitely kick people's respective rear ends). We lived not too far from each other and rode the same bus to Franklin Intermediate School in Chantilly, VA. One morning, I had the nerve to stand up for my mother, whom Tara made fun of for taking me to the bus stop in her bath robe (she was a stay at home mom and it was 7:00 a.m.- what do people expect?). Tara gave me a verbal outpouring of 4 and 5 letter words and I think might have even thrown in a few punctuation marks. Needless to say, I lived in fear for the next several months of 8th grade. I thought about running for student government and posted an essay on the wall with the other candidates, only to have it scribbled on at first and taken down later. Later that year, however, her bff Sam and I both happened to miss the bus. Knowing that bff's mom worked, I offered Sam a ride to school with me. I won bff over with this and she was always cool with me at school. Needless to say, Tara couldn't very well hate me when bff was friends with me, so she chilled and was cool to me by the end of the year. Enough so that when we moved on to Oakton High the next year, she even asked me to let her cheat off of me in English class. I don't remember agreeing to it, so I'm pretty sure I either said no or I gave her the wrong answers and she never found out about it.

I have no idea whether or not Tara ever ended up graduating from high school. If she did, she was old enough that she almost would have been able to legally buy booze for graduation parties.

Then there is Chris K. Chris moved (back?) to Pocatello for our senior year at Highland. I did not know Chris before like most of the other kids in our class, since I had just moved in our junior year. Chris was (and I'm sure still is) very attractive. I think I said about 10 words to him the entire year. This was the thing with Chris (and I know I am not entirely making this up, my friends from high school who knew him could attest to this)- he had this way of staring at me as if he were doing one of two things: he was either trying to make me explode by staring at me and concentrating all of his energy or he was staring at me as if to undress me with his eyes. I'm sure he was nice enough, and he had a beautiful singing voice, but he just gave me the willies. Last I heard, he was a police officer in Vegas and was married with children.

Then there was Jeff Jenkins. Jeff was the A/V guy working at EFY in Rexburg the summer that I got to be a counselor there. Jeff was the sweetest guy in the whole world! He was kind of quiet, but always had a smile and a hello. I had talked to my girls about him during the week at different times. He and I had a brief convo in the hallway- it was great. Then, at the last dance, I strategically placed myself where he would have the chance to ask me to dance, and he did! He was so cute- he said "I'm sorry it has taken me so long to ask you to dance. I've wanted to all night." Sigh....I have no idea what happened to him or where he ended up.

I wonder what people would say about me if they were doing this type of entry. Anyhow, there are loads of people I have crossed paths with, but those are three that happen to stick out in my mind today.