Thursday
Nice that Kraut and Frank Week coincided with Valentine's Day (observed). I'm not sure exactly why Valentine's Day was observed on Thursday the 11th instead of the 14th, as usual; maybe that's when the school district listed it for the grade schools? I apparently didn't do much to observe it, though.
Instead I went to Julie's birthday party, apparently. Not sure why I took inventory of her gifts -- other than it was a pretty odd and awesome list -- nor do I remember what I got her. I don't feel like I was all that close with Julie, but I guess I was close enough for a birthday party. I do remember that it was held in her basement, and that several other not-super-close friends were also in attendance. I thought Julie was nice and pretty, and all our mutual friends were also really nice, and I was happy to be at the party, hanging out with people I wouldn't have normally seen outside school. That happened more than usual senior year, which isn't terribly surprising, I guess. We were all getting ready to head to off to college, so I think we all felt like we should reach out to people we maybe always wanted to get to know better but didn't for some reason, to mark that relationship in some way. And maybe also to try out those people to see if they should be made closer friends, or at least not cut off, after we embarked on the next phase of our lives.
The thing about being in school with people for years and years is, over time you get to know them pretty well even if you're not close. By the time I graduated BHS, I knew the names of nearly my entire class of 512 and probably a couple hundred kids in other grades, and was on friendly terms with most of them. And I had shared experiences with and knew details about nearly all of them at some point. I probably had a larger circle of close friends than a lot of kids, but my innermost circle was probably the same size as most people's. So even though I might not have known a ton about
Brad S. was the guy whose house I went to on Jan. 23 to play pond hockey. Again, not a particularly close friend. A mutual friend of mine and Julie's, though.
Friday
Heh, "who are 'we men'?" indeed. I remember it being Mike, Chad, Bolinger and me, but there may have been a couple other guys along, too. We went bowling at Algonquin Lanes, which was not our typical bowling destination -- I think we went there so we wouldn't run into other friends on our "men's night out."
Bolinger, who we usually called Bol (pronounced like "bowl" or "boll weevil"), got a finger stuck in his bowling ball during one frame, resulting in the ball making it probably three quarters of the way down the lane before landing and knocking down "the asshole," which was our nickname for the seven and ten pins, one of which would often stubbornly stay standing despite our best efforts at a strike. Between Bol's bomb and our other goofball antics, the alley manager came over and yelled at us a couple times. We didn't get kicked out, but we came close.
The drawing at the top is not a boll weevil, nor is it drawn from any lifelike bug. Its anatomy seems to have been based on a cootie. I don't think Mike based "Our Lady of the Holy Prune" on a real person either, but he might claim differently.
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