The Stranger Moments of Being Home
Published November 27, 2007
By Lea McLellan
I finally came home and it’s just as I thought it would be-pretty much the same. Stop & Shop is still the place to go if you want to see everybody’s mom, the creepy bank guy is as creepy as ever, and my house is still filled with pets, brothers, and the familiar mess that goes with them.
There was never a whole lot to do in my town. There still isn’t, but I wasn’t too worried. I figured I would be content with relaxing and seeing my family and I was right. In between family time, I slept really late, caught up on all the TV I’d missed, and ignored all the schoolwork that awaited me in Burlington. It was nice, but after two days of relaxation, I had had enough. Since I wasn’t about to do homework, I decided I seriously needed to call up my long lost high school friends.
I love my friends from high school. But I’ve always wondered if our friendships had more to do with the fact that we had all been in the same Daisy troops and kindergarten classes and less to do with actually having anything in common. I couldn’t wait to meet new people in college whom I didn’t necessarily play house with at daycare.
I haven’t been the best at keeping in contact with everyone from home. But seeing as how I refused to watch another rerun of Project Runway, I sucked it up and called everyone I knew.
Since we’re broke and there’s really nowhere to go, I knew what we were going to do. Gossip. Well… gossip sounds bad. Talk. We were going to talk about ourselves first, and then when that got old, we would talk about everyone we had seen, talked to, and heard about.
I know that gossiping is never a very productive way to spend an evening, but neither is watching
SpongeBob, so I went with it.
My in-state and out-of-state (but home every weekend) friends wasted no time in filling me in on everyone. I had no idea who was still together, broken up, hooking up, loving school, dropping out, moving back… there is even a couple in my class that’s engaged. Well… we’re not sure — it might be just a promise ring, but still! That’s some seriously juicy stuff.
It was fun to laugh and talk with my friends, but it was also a little weird. It seemed as if everyone from my high school was either already going to school in-state and going to parties with the same old crowd, or they were miserable and transferring back home as soon as they could.
I can’t relate to these friends.
Home is good because it’s home and my friends are great because… well because they’re my friends, but I can’t imagine wanting to be in a boring town talking about who’s engaged (or promise ringed) for any longer than I did.
It sounds terrible, but I realized that I don’t really miss my friends; at least not to the point of ever wanting to come home on a random weekend. Feeling confident we were close enough for no one to take it too personally, I asked the group whether I was some kind of heartless freak.
My friend Ashley responded. Ashley and I were in the same first grade class and on the same middle school basketball team. She’s superskinny, stylish, highlighted and is getting her degree in sunbathing at University of Tampa. She calls people “girl,” says “yo” excessively, and actually likes Paris Hilton. I like her a lot because she is who she is and she keeps it real.
“Yo girl, I like totally know how you feel. I think maybe it’s because… well you and me have always just kinda been a little bit like… fuck it… you know?” she said and shrugged.
In a way I did know. What she said made a weird sort of sense. Ashley and I have always shared the same, independent-minded, borderline snobbish attitude. A friend ditches us? Screw ‘em and call someone else. Some biotch tries to start drama? Not interested. And when it came to high school, we had fun and liked hanging out with people, but we recognized there had to be something better. Four years of proms, pep rallies, and the occasional party with lame guys playing beer pong and getting all sloppy drunk could not be the highlight of our lives. When high school was over, it was over. “Fuck it… you know?”
Maybe it’s not such a bad way to be.
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