I met my friend Joni the summer before my sophomore year of high school. We were both pledges for a high school social club in our hometown, and while I’m really not sure how the social clubs became a tradition (a tradition that is still going strong, I might add), I do know that when I was 14, I was convinced – CONVINCED – that I would never have a meaningful social life if I didn’t join. That is why I spent the better part of three months making an utter fool of myself so that I could fulfill the requirements for membership. That is also why I am certain that if I could travel back in time, the grown-up version of me would tell the 14 year-old version of me to HAVE SOME PRIDE, ALREADY, and stop it with that pledging business.
Seriously. If I told y’all everything that we had to do, you would cringe. And you would also understand why the smell of maple syrup will forever make me shudder.
What I realized early on in that pledging process, though, was that Joni, who was a year older, was hilarious. Her dry sense of humor made me laugh until my stomach hurt, and her perfectly-timed one-liners made that very long, very hot summer just a little bit more bearable. I got the biggest kick out of being around her.
When school started that fall, Joni and I found ourselves in the same biology class, and we eventually became lab partners. That meant that we got to walk through all sorts of memorable moments together – like dissecting a cat that we christened “Diane,” for instance. Joni’s grasp of biology far exceeded mine; I usually had a hard time in classes that didn’t interest me, and for most of high school, English was my only interest (well, English and typing – and for whatever reason, I really loved calculus). Joni and I would often plan “study sessions” before a big biology test, but we usually laughed way more than we studied. I’m sure that at some point I memorized a few details about prophase and anaphase and meiosis and mitosis, but the fellowship was way more fun than the subject matter. Always.
There were lots of days when Joni and I would start conversations in biology class that time didn’t permit us to finish, so we fell into the habit of writing epic, novella-length notes to each other after biology was over. There’s no telling how many pieces of paper we passed back and forth between classes. And while I know that hard things happened and sad things happened and embarrassing things happened, we’d write those notes and try our best to find the funny in every single bit of it.
A couple of years ago I ran into Joni here in Birmingham, and after we visited for a few minutes, she asked me if I remembered the notes we used to write. I absolutely did, though I hadn’t thought about them in a long time, and she told me that she’d kept a lot of them tucked away in a box at her house. I couldn’t believe that she’d held on to them, but oh, did I ever want to read a few. And when Joni and I saw each other again at a Mississippi State football game this past fall, she assured me that she really was going to dig out that box of notes and see what ancient treasures she could find.
Monday night I clicked over to Facebook, and this picture was at the top of my feed.
I spied my 10th grade handwriting in the bottom, left-hand corner. And I grinned like crazy.
I’m not a person who gets overly nostalgic when I think about high school. It was fun and I had great teachers and I made some wonderful, life-long friends, but by and large I am infinitely more nostalgic about college. That being said, there was something about seeing that old note in Joni’s picture – that little sliver of my 15 year-old self – that made me so grateful for the blessing of sweet friends and healthy friendships. I had no idea how fortunate I was.
But I understand it now.
And I am ever-so-grateful.
Does anything make you nostalgic for your high school days?
So precious! I think I still have a NIKE shoe box filled with notes in my closet at my parents’ house. Operation Find The Notes will be underway when we’re there in May. (That rhyming was purely accidental, I might add.) I remember the rush of a successful note passing without getting caught during class. Living. On. The. Edge.
This totally reminds me of my high school BFF. When the garden variety note-writing became dull, we would indulge in writing “future letters” to each other…..pretending we were writing from 10 years in the future – she, a successful, high-powered attorney living in the big city, while I was married to a saxophone playing youth pastor. HA! I think I still have those tucked away in a “Sam and Libby” box somewhere….I’ll have to dig those out and take a trip down memory lane. :)
Love this!! My best friend from high school and I were so committed to writing notes (at the expense of actually paying attention in class, mind you…) we had an entire notebook devoted to it. The infamous Purple Notebook (clever title, I know…) One of us would carry it around, along with our other notebooks, folders and textbooks, all the while writing some lengthy novel of a note, exchanging it between classes or after school or at someone’s locker. Usually they were goofy, silly, high school things, but we also wrote about things close to our hearts, that we didn’t share with another living soul. I think we filled an entire notebook, and had to begin a second edition. This may have been the thing that cemented our friendship all those years ago… If the Purple Notebook ever fell into the wrong hands, we knew we were both in trouble.
The “study sessions” comment made me laugh, too. There were 5 of us, including the Purple Notebook best friend, and we named ourselves “Party of 5.” Yes, it was more by way of “party” (as in laughing and goofing around) than “study,” but we all managed to somehow pass the tests.
Thanks so much for this reminder of incredible friendship, and what a blessing it truly is to those who share it.
Oh my. You and I might secretly be the same person – from the dumb high school social club (same deal here in NC) to the novella notes. Full of nothing and everything. Loved this post!
Talk about Serendipity! I married my high school sweetheart 6 weeks after graduation (my honeymoon was to move to THE University of Texas where we both would graduate 3 yrs later). Anyhoo, Michael keeps up with teammates from high school via social media and such and just YESTERDAY he flew home to meet up with his mile relay team to visit their beloved coach in hospice. When he called me last night from the airport, we were both transported back to that wonderful time in our lives! I’m with you, class was the secondary reason for high school, the friends, activities and clubs were the real reason! On any given day he and I can wax poetic
( or tell the same story AGAIN) for hours. While it wasn’t the highlight of our life together, it was fun and we are grateful for the connection we share to that time.
How fun for you to see all those notes again! What a treasure! Thanks for sharing.
Oh, man, my BFF made me a scrapbook long before scrapbooks were cool! I got rid of it, and for good reason, there are things that my children must never-ever find out! LOL! But I remember how special it made me feel that someone spent that amount of time just thinking about me. Thanks for sharing.
Goodness Sophie. I thought you were getting ready to tell us something bad about your friend Joni with the way your post was reading lol. What a sweet memory.
absolutely nothing
We had those social clubs in Galveston, too. And I would also love to see some of my notes from high school. What a fun friend! Loved this story.
My best friend and I also wrote epic letters to one another to assauge the boredom of high school history and Latin class (and others.) I have saved many of those letters (I graduated in 1983). They are packed away somewhere in my basement..moved with me through 7-8 moves. So funny!
Oh my! Girlfriend (hope you don’t mind me calling you “Girlfriend”) High school was by and large almost the most traumatic time of my life- which is saying a lot. But I still have a soft spot in my heart for one of my dear friends. She found me on FB a while back and sent me a picture of a note I had sent her! It was in a million different colors and regaled all our crazy antics… as well as a few Michael W. Smith, Amy Grant and Carmen lyrics… those were the days! So glad you shared this. Amy
Just forwarded this to Jane, who was my Joni. I wish so much that I had kept all of our notes, and when I was at camp she wrote me Every Day!! But hey, why did you name the dead cat Diane?? 😳
I see your next book right there. Co-authored with Joni.
Sonic happy hour. We piled into the car and would laugh until we cried while drinking cherry limeades. I even knew The Carhop of the Year. I miss those times.
Oh my goodness! How delightful it is to find my “sisters” from all over the country! My best friend and I were note writers too! We thought we were so sly! We had those desks with the wrap around arm rest and when we sat one in front of the other we could “take very diligent notes” in class while at the same time, carry on a highly detailed, epic conversation that passed back and forth underneath the front girls right elbow. It was genius!! We did this for years and never once got caught! By our senior year this was a point of pride for us! She was also the valedictorian and I was in the top 20 of the class, so somewhere in there we did take actual class notes and diligently study something other than the cute boys who were the subject of our epic note writing! She kept them in shoe boxes (the notes, not the boys;-) and over the years moved them (as a military wife, no less!) until they were eventually lost. But we re-read them a few times and the funniest thing about them was our “code”…the stuff we didn’t want anyone to figure out, on the horrifying chance a note got intercepted. Ten, fifteen years later, we had no blessed clue what we were talking about, but we were so passionate about it all!!
What a fun trip down memory lane! Speaking of which, please tell me you are as eagerly anticipating three nights of Rob Lowe narrating a show on the Eighties as I am?!! I can’t wait for my kids to see it!!
Rarely does a day go by that I don’t think about something that happened in high school. It’s strange to think that it was only four years of my life, but still nearly 25 years later, I recall events like they happened last week. My daughter will be a senior next year so I have constantly reminded her to enjoy every minute of these years. She has listened to me and has made memories that will last a lifetime for her, too.
Social clubs must be a southern thing. We had nothing like that in Northern Indiana, but plenty of other clubs that required some kind of skill or talent or brains, like Honor Society. The closest I came to being in a social club was the theater group. lots of fun times with that bunch. Joining in a sorority in college was a real awakening—we had rush and hell week and all that nonsense, which seemed so important at the time.
I had a note intercepted once—-I still break out in a sweat when I think of that humiliation.
Nothing makes me nostalgic for high school–couldn’t wait to get out. Except…Glee. Oh, yeah, I was in show choir before show choir was cool. Best part of high school by far.
We want you to tell us what the notes said!
The further away I get from my high school years (that by and large were full of friends and great memories) I have begun to realize how fortunate I was. So many teenagers, both then and now, did not and do not have those good memories. The stories of the 2 young women from CA and Canada the past week are heartbreaking. Praying for their families …
Oh man! I have a box full of silly high school notes. Such fun memories! :)
Oh my word – this SO reminds me of my high school BFF and I!! And biology was also the place of our note writing and passing!! Such great memories!
I had a box of notes from high school, and when I moved the last time, I THREW IT AWAY. All those notes.
I’ve never regretted anything more in my life.
Except maybe those acid washed jeans and the high bangs from 7th grade.