Memories 14: Grade 12 / Age 17

Grade 12 was a busy year, I took advanced placement (AP) Biology and AP Chemistry, which meant that four days a week I started school at 7am to take extra science classes.  I was definitely a bit of a nerd, I had (in fact still have) a thirst or knowledge.

I hate to be stereotypical, but the truth is my AP classes were composed primarily of incredibly smart students for whom English was a second language.  In general, we didn't have much in common.  Fortunately I made one good friend; Tom and I always joked we became friends by default since no one else in the class wanted us for lab partners and in truth, maybe we did. 

He was the smart type, straight A's, very focused, very meticulous and very hard working.  I remember on unit in AP Chem, for five consecutive weeks we had to perform independent labs and record our observations and results.  It drove Tom crazy that I barely understood the concepts but consistently got better results than him.  I followed the labs like I was baking cookies, leveling my ingredients with a shake of a wrist rather than a precise measurement, a few sporadic shakes of the flask instead of continuous mixing.  Neither of us could explain it, but my results were consistently better than his, it was almost like he tried too hard.

Tom and I spent a lot of hours together that year and there was truly never any feelings between us except friendship, but in the end our relationship made his girlfriend uncomfortable and though we tried, our friendship waned after high school.

I think its normal to lose some friends after high school; losing them a month before grad however, that's a little less traditional.  There were four of us girls that hung out regularly, but only three of us went to one school.  I won't get into the details, but a tiff occurred and our group split in half.  Unfortunately my half didn't go to our school and I was dropped like a hot potato.

My locker mate moved out, my 'friends' ignored me like the plague and I was left with a gloomy looking grad to look forward to.

Fortunately my friend Trevor stepped up and saved my day, my year in fact.  We'd been kind-of-friends for a couple years, but when my girl friends ditched me, he pulled me into his circle of friends.  I attended grad in a limo with eight guys and Trevor's girlfriend at the time and it was amazing.  I felt so grateful to find a friend so caring and special at such a fragile and important time in my life.

Trevor and I are still close.  Our post-secondary friendship flourished, but now I only see him a few times a year as he and his wife live in another province.  The distance doesn't matter though, I love him and I know I will always love him.  And although I hate that I had to experience teenage girls at their worst to discover such a beautiful friendship, I would do it again in a heartbeat, because Trevor is truly a friend worth having.

This is post 14/15 and is part of Mommy's Piggy Tales

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