Let’s Stick Together

I’m not sure how dorky it sounded.  At the time I thought it was the right thing to say.  I guess when you are 12, scared to death, and wanting to be a leader of sorts you say stuff that when you are almost 30 sound really, really dorky.

There were five of us there that Sunday night at Lafayette Baptist Church: Me, Melissa Klerx, Sarah Bailey, Jeremy Holt, and JJ Kinstrey.  There might have been more, but those are the faces I remember staring back at me like I had just grown a third arm.  It was the night before the new school year started.  We were all going into the 7th grade and at our church that meant that we were moving from the children’s department to the youth department.  We would be hanging out with..wait for it…HIGH SCHOOL KIDS.

The four I mentioned before: Jeremy, JJ, Sarah, and Melissa all lived pretty close to one another in a different part of town.  (Also in that area were my good friends Jason and Jenna Hottel, Matt Klerx (Melissa’s older brother), Michael Bailey (Sarah’s younger brother), Matt Mabry (Michael’s neighbor and best friend…he was also in my mom’s kindergarten class.))

That Summer we would go pool hopping between the Klerx’s, Bailey’s, and Mabry’s pools.  I probably exaggerate the amount of time we were over there, but it felt like almost everyday.  (If we weren’t at one of their pool’s then we were at the Sports Center pool.)  The highlight of that summer was getting in a big group and all going to see Mrs. Doubtfire.  You know, the one where Robin Williams is in drag.

We were close that Summer.

I don’t know when I realized that I should be scared of going into the youth group.  Some switch flipped in my head, as if I had eaten the poisonous apple of adolescence, and I felt naked.  All of a sudden I realized that I wasn’t cool enough to be in youth group and that if I was going to survive I needed to have a posse with me.

So, I turned to them at the end of the service and said with as much courage and bravado as I could muster: “Guys, its just us now.  We have to stick together when we get into the youth group next week.  We have to be a team.”

I think JJ shook his head and Jeremy laughed, Melissa groaned and Sarah (my friend from 1st grade all the way to this day) tried to make me feel better, but I knew that I had already screwed up and youth group was only a week away.