Thank you for being a friend.
Traveled down the road and back again,
Your heart is true you're a pal and a confidant.
I'm not ashamed to say,
I hope it always will stay this way.
My hat is off, won't you stand up and take a bow.
- from Andrew Gold's Thank You for Being a Friend!*
As I noted last time, I now know that I suffered from undiagnosed clinical depression my Senior year in high school. The reason I mentioned everything that led to my depression was so you would understand why I had all but given up on successfully completing high school. I couldn't see how to get out of the pit I was in and was on the verge of allowing the depression to paralyze me. That's where the people I've been talking about came in. Between the friends I was having lunch with at El Guapo's on Sunday the 12th, other friends I've mentioned throughout this series, and two special teachers, I (barely) managed to graduate.
I don't think any of my friends ever knew how close it had been or how important they had been to me. It wasn't because they tutored me or (God Forbid) helped me cheat, it was because of two things: 1) they provided me with living examples of what I should be doing; and 2) they never once applied Peer Pressure to me for any reason. If I didn't have two teen aged daughters of my own that had allowed me to view Peer Pressure from a father's point of view, I don't think I would have ever realized how blessed I was in high school.
During my years at Memorial, I knew people who used recreational drugs, who were a bit wild, who smoked, who skipped school, who had secret lives, who...well, you get the idea. But not a single one of those people ever put any sort of pressure on me to do what they were doing. I was offered the opportunity to join in if I wanted to, but it was no big deal if I didn't. I was blessed to be surrounded by the sweetest, kindest, funnest, most truly Cool students to ever grace a high school. Quite frankly, the obnoxiously vain crack weasels that are presented as the so-called 'cool kids' in the teen dramas from the 90's and early part of this decade aren't worthy of cleaning the toilets of those I knew in high school. That hot Sunday in Tulsa, I was lunching with the real deal.
Next time, The Show Must Go On. Until then, best regards...
* Thank You for Being a Friend © Lackyu Music, Los Angeles, CA 1978
© James P. Rice 2009
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