I hardly know anyone who dated someone in high school and went off to college and still stayed with that same person and then eventually got married to that same exact person they dated in high school. I say I hardly know anyone, but really except for this one person I in knew in Columbus when I lived there I don't think I know any. She lived next door to me and when I met her 20 years ago I was in the 10th grade and she was dating this guy. Actually I should say I know two people because I knew him too, sort of, even though I was more friends with her than him. He and I weren't really friends, although we had a friend-type relationship. His name was Brad. Actually his real name was Norman or something like that, but everyone called him Brad because his last name was like Bradley or Bradford or something. It seems like that would have been really confusing if he had any brothers or sisters, but it really didn't concern me and when I was 16 I had a lot of other things on my mind.

 

 

Mostly what I had on my mind was that girl's sister who also lived next door to me. I took her to the prom senior year because my girlfriend who I'd been seeing that whole year dumped me like two weeks before prom. I mean, I didn't take Norman-Brad's girlfriend to the prom, I took her sister who was two years behind me in school so I had to bring her home early but that was cool because since she lived right next door I sat outside her window and we talked all night. Back then we didn't have a word for stalking. Anyway we were just friends.

 

Our prom that year was at the Officer's Club at Fort Benning, which was real nice. Anyway I think it was, I don't remember a whole lot about the actual event, so maybe there's some reason I blocked it out, although since I did block it out then obviously I have no idea what that reason might be. We doubled with my friend Chris who after graduation went to Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College about 3 hours away, and when he was there he met this guy at the BSU who I knew from public school in Atlanta, which was kind of weird, I mean, that two guys I knew from two different places should meet and be friends like that. But whatever.

 

 

Public School was different, anyway. For one thing, in public school, folks beat each other up all the time. And in public school everyone did drugs. I remember this one time I was having lunch on a Monday morning with some friends and we were talking about our weekends and this one girl told us that she had wanted to go to a concert Friday night but her grandmother wouldn't let her so she put sleeping pills in her grandmother's coffee, and she didn't know how many to put in so she just put in a whole bunch and her grandmother only drank a sip of it because it turned the coffee blue but she still fell asleep and Monday morning my friends were like "Did she wake up yet?"

 

Anyway you didn't see many drugs in the private school where I went, although you did totally see them all over the public school. Like this one time I knew this one guy who got depressed and tried to overdose on pot four times but like every time he did he would pass out way before he died from it, and all that wound up happening was that he just smoked a ton of pot which he did most of the time anyway. So obviously he didn't kill himself but now if you call his name it's like it takes him five minutes to even hear you. It's really sad. But still kind of funny.

 

 

And so anyway then I graduated high school and went to college for a year and I don't think anything interesting happened to me that whole year except maybe for this one time there was this one guy we used to play jokes on all the time, who I'll call Jimmy even though that wasn't his real name and anyone who reads this who knew me back then will totally know exactly who I'm talking about, and anyway this guy was always talking really loud and showing off and he was all into Rambo and all that even though he totally knew nothing about it, really, and I don't even think he ever joined the army, but anyway I knew these guys he was hanging out with and one time they told him they could make explosives out of bleach and flour and a bunch of other stuff (even though you totally can't) and they mixed it all up in a coffee can in his parent's kitchen and then acted like they "accidentally" lit the fuse, and then ran away so he picked it up and threw it out the back door and was so scared he peed his pants, which might all seem a very cruel thing to do if you consider that he was a human being with feelings like anyone else, but if you knew what a loudmouth jerk he was it was really really funny.

 

And then there's more but it'll have to wait.