Me and the Boys

What is it with me and boys? I drive them crazy... they drive me crazy. And yet how many have I had a crush on (you don't want to make me count them), and how many of them are my childhood, high school, and college friends/buddies?

I started thinking about this because there is a pile of pictures sitting on my desk in front of me. My dad has been sorting through all of our pictures and putting them into albums. Well, as I flipped through one of the stacks, I found a picture that was taken at my high school graduation party (man, I wish I could post pictures!). Its a picture of Ty, Brandon, Me, and Bryan. Ty is the oldest son of my dad's best friend, and Brandon and Bryan are the oldest sons of my mom's best friend. Our parents knew each other long before any of us were born and so we grew up together. It was the four of us in so many pictures... usually laughing at something. One of the coolest pictures from when I was little is of the four of us on my dad's hammock when we were all about 6 or 7 years old. Well, that hammock has long since broken, but we have another one just like it. So, at my graduation party, since all four of us were together once again (having gone separate ways for a large chunk of our lives), we took a picture in front of the hammock (we couldn't fit on it together anymore) in the same order we were sitting in the old picture... and we're laughing.

My other main childhood groupie was me and my cousins. You see, we have a unique relationship. All three of our moms are sisters... we are all only children... and we were born within 6 months of each other. Nick was born in January, Me in March, and Justin in May (all following the birth order of our mothers). When we were little, I went through every phase with them: Ninja Turtles (I had the movies memorized), Karate (I wasn't in classes... I was their practice dummy), Beach Boys and Michael Jackson (now thats a very strange pair)... Anyway, most of the pictures with the three of us have Nick on the left, Me in the middle, and Justin on the right. This was consistent with our age as well as our height... but not for long. Soon, I was completely dwarfed. One of the pictures that I ran across in the pile on my desk was of Nick, Me and Justin, in the correct order, standing at the base of a waterfall in Yosimite for our family trip that essentially celebrated our Graduation from High School... because we all graduated at the same time. And of course, I'm no longer the second tallest. In fact, they're both about a head taller than me... and I think its funny.

To be continued...