Staying Friends And Wanting A Tad Bit More

A Walk Through My Past That Leads To My Future

Picture of Sarah at top..

      Sooooo, my best friend Ryan and I move into a new apartment building that can accommodate up to two people an apartment.

      I took the top left and Ryan takes the one across the hall from mine. The bottom two haven't been occupied yet.

     And the weird thing it took almost a whole year for them to finally get rented. Which suited us just fine. So when they finally do, it ends up the first apartment on the right is being rented by my soon to be, second best friend, Casey Wright.

We got a long just perfect. She was a year younger than Ryan and I, 28. Blonde hair, blue eyes and super pretty. With a skinny figure and bubbly personality, she easily fell in place as my second best friend, with Ryan always being my first.

     So, when our land lord came by to collect our rent on April 5th, and informed us that he rented the bottom left apartment to, 2 single men who were cops, actually, detectives at the 34rd precinct in the area where we live, which is in the state of St. Louis, Missouri, our reactions varied.

Casey was excited. Ryan was excited, but nervous. I was wary.

     
       "Oh! I hope they are hot!" she squealed excited. I looked over at her from my kitchen counter and smiled at her excitedness. Ryan smiled as well, but, since we've been best friends since 8th grade, I knew he was nervous as well."I hope they aren't , you know, critical and snobby. I hope their layed back and cool."

        I glanced over at Ryan and tried to reassure him. See, Ryan is gay and just came out. I've known Ryan since 9th grade, when we had our weekend night sessions in High School.        Ryan and I had very busy schedules. We were both the top 2 students in our class and fought long and hard to keep it that way.

It ended up him being valedictorian of our class and me salutatorian. Ryan ended beating me by 2 points, with a GPA of 4.02 and me a GPA of 4.0. Along with maintaining well grades Ryan was in football, basketball and baseball along with Honor's Society and Thespian Club and Boosters. I, under detest with my parents who never forced me to do anything but guilt-ed me in to staying with it... all 4 years of High School ...(ugh)  and lettering in it all 4 years, cheer leading and poms. It's not that I hated those two extra curricular activities but I couldn't stand the girls on the team.

They were snobby, overbearing and cliquey. I made myself get a long with them, but could not stand it when the times I had to sit with them at lunch once a week for our weekly meeting, and made fun of anyone from not having the in-clothes to being goth to looking too poor or nerdy, ect...I wanted to stick a fork in my ears and stab my eyes out so I couldn't hear their annoying voices and look at their too much makeup, and high dollar clothes. I just didn't understand buying a pair of jeans for $200-$350, when you could easily go to a local store like, Good Will and buy them for $40 and even that was pricey in my opinion.

     I mean geez, my younger sister and I went prom dress shopping and didn't even buy one for me, because my older cousin that lived in North Carolina called me that morning and said I could have her old one. So instead of shelling out $400 for a dress I'd only wear once, my sister Stephanie and I decided to take a road trip to Camp Lejune, North Carolina; where, my Uncle Staff Sergeant Michael Lawson and my cousin Jess, who graduated last year lived at the time.

It's not like my parents couldn't afford it. My mom worked in the governors office as a hand language translator for Governor Jay Nixon. And the pay was well in the blah, blah...(who cares really)...a year. And dad worked at Bowing as a aeronautical engineer. And well, sometimes he's not allowed to say what he's working on, because its for Scott Air Force Base and security classified. Let's just say, he's never said how much he makes but it pays our bills with enough left over to be frivolous if he so desired. But my parents have no reason to flaunt their money and raised us kids to understand the meaning of saving for the future. They raised us in a simple 2 story house. Where my sister, Stephanie and I shared a room and my 2 brothers, Matthew and Paul shared a room. We lived on about 8 acres farm though. We had chickens, cows, 2 horses, hens, a huge garden. We planted all types of veggies and another garden that we planted fruits and sunflowers along 3 apple trees, 2 peach trees, mulberry tree. And let me tell you, my parents both worked from 6 am till whenever their job would let them off. Plus, one thing I should mention, my sister Stephanie is paraplegic. She was involved in a car accident when she was 8 years old. I was 12 years at the time. My dad was driving, my mom was in the passenger seat and Steph was in the back seat and hadn't settled in her booster seat yet. In the state of Missouri, you have to be 9 years of age or at least 90 pounds to not have to need a car seat or booster seat. Steph got thrown out the back of the car out on to the highway. She was air lifted to Children's Hospital where she was in a coma for almost 8 months. She finally came out but was using a trachea to help breathe. The doctors took the tracheae tube out to soon and my sister was worsened than what she already was. My parents sued Children's and got a lot of money that was put in a savings account in her name only for anything she desired, needed and her future.
So, as I was saying before, my parents worked and we didn't have any maids or hired hands, just us kids, mom and dad, and cousins that liked to help family and enjoy being around close family. Plus every Saturday, we'd all hang out and adults and or of age adults would party and over indulge at times, got a group together and play some cards and when overindulging, get rowdy and camp out because when you drank, your keys got put up by my mom. We had a lake so we'd swim, canoe, fish, get on the boat and have fun, go crawdad fishing, play in the woods, the older cousins would get a game of tackle football, softball, or badminton game going on. The others, mainly my girl cousins would all chill inside and do the girly thing, like trying on my moms old clothes from when she younger, make up, gossip or call boys they thought were cute, some of the older girl cousins would try to set one or another on dates. In my family you had to be 17 to date alone, 16 in a pair of at least one other couple and 15 in a group, but you better not call it a date in front of our dads, uncles, or any male in our family. If that was said or the word 'boyfriend', and they haven't been introduced to our father first, then accepted, that so-called boyfriend/date would pretty much be interrogated so bad by our Uncles, and older male cousins that they were too afraid to ever talk to you again. So, by the time I was 15, I was so busy  trying to maintain my grades and sports and clubs, plus just meeting Ryan, I didn't have time to date. I even ended up going to prom with Ryan. He ended up, as well as I, being well liked in school. Ryan always had girls trying to get his attention by;