The story of Us - by Kid

I'm gonna see if I can do this as one post, but we all know my ability to run at the mouth, so we'll see.

The Advengineer is the first of the group that I met, as she stated earlier we actually met at Rancho Santa Margarita Intermediate School  - Go Roadrunners, err something.  I can't remember when I first heard about Leilani but I remember why.  There was a boy at our school whose last name was Leilani, and I remember thinking - if they get married she'll be Leilani Leilani.  

We eventually met through Fawn, I know I have some pictures of Lei from jr. high, and I had actually forgotten that she was friends with Christin.  But in my memory we continued on a track of being more like acquaintances until our confirmation retreat sophomore year.  Leilani was a fellow member of San Francisco Solano, the Catholic church that was actually part of our high school campus.  (AMDG and Ninja both attend/ed some other church). And sophomore year all us good little parishioners were shipped out to the woods to prepare ourselves to be committed adult Catholics.

Lei was in the same room as me, confirmation retreat may sound terribly tedious but I remember having a lot of fun.  We played foozeball (how do you spell that?) and went on nature hikes, and to my memory we were generally rowdy and silly after we were supposed to be in bed.  Yes, we also had sessions where we talked about God and making positive life choices for ourselves and such, but most talks started with an entertaining skit.  Okay, I might be biased, I was a confirmation leader my junior year and I also might have been a co-director my senior.  But, well, at least I thought it was fun.  Lei?

Anyway, I left the weekend having met the first boy who would ask me on a date (oh the religious "meet markets" do work as intended) and feeling that Leilani and I had firmly moved into friendship.  Fun, sweet and super cool snowboarder and surfer -- what's not to love? I still have a little note that she wrote to me and drew a cute snowboarder girl on (I save everything).

Now Ninja, I met her after Lei but we were friends before Lei and I were really friends.  Linds and I met at the end of summer right before high school was about to begin -- at band camp, yes, that's right.  Linds and I were bandos together and that pretty much sealed our friendship for life- Bandos 4ever.  Linds played the tenor sax and I played the bassoon.  I remember that my hair was still growing out from the pixie cut I had in jr. high.  I was soo nervous about meeting new people at my school -- I asked my mom to force all of my short little hairs into a tight, tight little bun.  I believe the result of this is that when I met Linds for the second time, on the first day of school or maybe at freshman orientation, she didn't recognize me because my hair was down and my eyes weren't pulled back by the tightness of the bun.  

I can't remember when we started spending substantial time together outside of band, but bando time was substantial enough.  We both had wind ensemble together during school, marching band rehearsal after school and eventually football games every Friday night.  Even though I didn't have to go to the away games because I played the bassoon and it was not a pep-band instrument - yes, of course it's not a marching band instrument either but our director, "Doc", insisted that I play, sitting on a chair, at the front of the group - uggh.  Anyway, I didn't have to go to the away games but I did anyway because I was super cool.  Lindsay was actually cool, there was this really cute drummer - Steve, he was a senior, and he totally liked Linds.  But I think it eventually ended because her parents didn't want her dating a senior, or dating at all?

Eventually all us girls, the bando girls, the bio girls, the swimmer girls and all the girls in-between became a little group of friends and extended friends, and we ate lunch together.  Where we ate lunch switched every year, but it was always somewhere in the sun, on the ground (this is surely a strange idea to all you east coasters - lunch was always outside, the "cafeteria" was just a huge open air awning with tables underneath, we only ate indoors when it was raining).  Senior year we actually started sitting at one of the cafeteria tables (did we call it the cafeteria?) but we still sat on the ground in the sun sometimes too.  We were really good girls, my brother still marvels at how "good" my friends and I were in high school.

Now somewhere in here came AMDG, but for some reason I don't have a distinct memory of meeting her.  Do you?  P was one of the swimmers, and ate with us sometimes senior year, she was friends with my friends and that's how we met.  I know I was invited to her Christmas party senior year.  I remember because I insisted I was okay to go even though I had a heart procedure preformed on me the day before.  I proceeded to fall asleep immediately and was driven home by my boyfriend.

My first real distinct memories of P don't come until after we graduated.  The summer we all really drank for the first time.  Oh man, that was a bad summer for me.  Anyway, at some point after high school we became a solidified group.  We began regularly e-mailing each other, visiting each other at college, spending breaks together.  Then we all got stars tattooed on our feet, along with three other lovely SM girls who have now largely dropped off our radars.  But we still remain - the four :).