Remembering Who You Are, Part 3

Jessica, Nikki, Mike, originally uploaded by crau1971.

This one made me laugh out loud:

Jessica "You know mine Court - when you threw me outta your house circa 1992 I think? hee hee..."

I didn't have a lot of house parties in high school, although my younger sisters did. Frequently. Occasionally, these parties would get a little more crowded than they needed to be, to put it mildly. My sisters are only a year apart, and between them, they probably were good friends with half of the teenagers in Norwood, and likely knew by name the other half. One of the girls in the overlapping circles they ran in was Jessica. For some reason, which I could not even begin to tell you why now, I could not STAND Jessica. Now, Jessica and I have had this conversation over the years, so she knows what I'm going to say. My initial impression of Jessica was that she was stuck up, full of herself, and bossy. I remember asking Cat why she hung out with her; "she's friends with Shivaun, so she's friends with me," was always Cat's response. I remained judgemental. One of my lesser traits.

Cat had one of her many parties in my parents' house one weekend they were away, and it was getting "crowded". A lot of kids I didn't recognize were coming in the door, and many of them were already a little too drunk for that early in the evening, so I was getting worried one of the neighbors would call the cops. Suddenly, a group of girls comes in the back door, and Jessica is one of them. Looking for a reason to start tossing kids out, I shout across my kitchen, "Jessica... get the FUCK out of my house!!!" Verbal melee starts with the friends, and the sister, and random other folks; however, I throw Jessica out of the house. My sisters were pissed, but it kept the numbers down.

Years later, my sister Cat is out with friends, and she falls and breaks her ankle. And the person who took charge of the emergency, took her to the hospital, and waited while she got fixed up was Jessica. I saw her at a party (ironically enough), and we talked to each other for the first time. And, Jessica is a great person. She's funny and smart, and she always has her friends' backs. So, the incident of me throwing her out of the house has become a great joke within that circle of friends. A great lesson for me, too, about not judging people. So, thank you, Jessica, for being one of my funnier memories.

Jessica is the first person in the picture. The gentleman on the right will feature in a later story. His sister's memory is next on the list.