Stake Romance

I've been thinking back on all the crazy adventures that were had in high school. Soph year? Insane. Junior year? Yeah. Crazy times. Remember? You were there! It was crazy.

Recently, something sparked a memory. I don't know what the something was, but it was the memory of stake dances.

Oh stake dances. They were a big thing in my town. If you weren't there, you weren't anyone. I remember my very first one. 14 year old girl. Freshman in high school. And of course I was smoking hot, I mean look at me... fresh out of middle school. Dang. But sorry boys, I was taken.... though *he* didn't know about it yet. He would. He'd come back from his mission and fall in love with me and marry me. I don't think he knew my name, and I don't think he knows it now, but that's how it was supposed to happen. thank goodness it didn't.

A fella, "G", asked me to dance. My first dance ever, with someone who wasn't my daddy.... or a kindergartener. And then I was all confused. I was supposed to marry this other guy, we were practically engaged, even though he never spared two words of conversation my direction.... but now there's "G". And I got all confused. I wrote a lot in my journal just trying to figure out what I should do. Because I had to decide THEN. Life happens all at once when you're 14.

Well, I turned into a sophomore, and that guy left and I forgot about him, and "G" left too... so there was that. I remember Brittany and Jackie and I went to a stake dance for a stake we weren't even in. I think it was Sarah, our friend's, stake. But she knew no one, and we knew no one...

With every guy we danced with, we had the same conversation.

"You're from Ogden?"
"Yeah."
"Do you have a gun?"
"No."
"Are you in a gang?"
"No."
"Are you going to shoot me?"
"If you keep asking me stupid questions, yeah."

Except for one guy who played the viola. We loved him. He was something. What was his name? What did he look like? I don't even know. But he played the viola. Or was it clarinet? I don't know.

I remember the New Years Eve dances, going to those just to make sure so and so's boyfriend didn't try to flirt with what's her name because so and so couldn't be there that night....

But in the end we'd end up sitting on the couches, poor little 15 year olds, wondering when our lives got away from us, and wondering how we'd ever catch up.

I'd like to go back and time.

I'd take young high school me by the shoulders.

I'd look her right in the eye.

I'd smile at her, shake my head, laugh....

And then slap her hard right across the face and try to knock some sense into her. Maybe she wouldn't have been so stupid if I could have traveled through time.

But hey, stupid me got me to where I am now, which is somewhere I really like, so I couldn't have been *that* bad, right?