I became friends with Katie Jung during my sophomore year of high school, when we were both stuck doing a ridiculous Christmas play for Laguna Creek’s less than impressive theater department. She and I bonded effortlessly in the midst of our offstage sulking, jokes, and stories that we shared. Then, at the beginning of our junior year, our lives were at an uncanny parallel, and we had the same lunch period— a recipe for instant partnership. We had the same dilemmas and endgames, and the paths we drew up to connect them was the foundation of our affinity. We served more roles than just “friend.” To each other, we were instigators, teachers, detectives, and the hype we each needed to go after what we wanted. We assumed all of those statuses because we were some low-key adrenaline junkies, and thrived off of marking as many days of high school into the books as possible.
Katie knows how to get shit done. She kind of put my go-getter tactics to shame when we were seventeen, and I had to advance my ways to keep up with the master. The fact that our lives were in similar places at the beginning of the year would have been just a coincidence, but the reality that we attuned them for as long as we did was not at all. We were making moves together like we were goddamn Thelma and Louise (the ride or die part, not the other stuff), and we had the nerve and commitment to match. We were daring, and a tad reckless, and each new adventure felt like we were in the middle of an unscripted sitcom (for better or for worse), and it was the best. We careened around each hairpin of high school in such synchrony because we were learning from each other’s mistakes and achievements, on top of our own. It put our lives into a better perspective; we were able to call each other out when we weren’t following our own advice. This is not to say that we weren’t the blind leading the blind, because that is absolutely what was happening. But at least we were blind together, ya know? Our high flying adventures led to some classic stories, some of which I’ll get to in later blogs* (the bottle incident, the drive-in fiasco, the senior ball date polyhedral), and forging those moments gave our high school existences quite the dramatic flare that we loved. But, thankfully, we have both gained enough insight from college that we can bestow much better wisdom unto each other nowadays. (I’m not sure yet if I’m being sarcastic, it’s too soon to tell). Regardless, our advice has definitely matured, as have we, and even though we have reigned in a little bit of our high school recklessness, we still push each other to go get what we want, and to realize what we've already got. *but probably not Any Grey's fans?
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