I copied and pasted this from my livejournal. Read it or something.

This morning I was woken up at nine o'clock by my dad who had opened my bedroom door and started blaring the Sunday Morning polka station. I am not a fan of polka. Nor am I a fan of waking up before 11 o'clock in the mornings on a weekend. This caused me to find entertainment that was low key enough to not rock my lack-of-sleep-hangover, but wasn't a total drag. So I read blogs. Usually music blogs. I do want to be a music journalist, but I am not half as seasoned as some of these people out there. And they always say that reading makes you a better writer.

So I'm reading this blog, mostly centered around hilarious things this guy did back in high school and old school hip hop and hardcore. And I came to the disgusting realization that I'm only seventeen and I miss my childhood. It's a stretch to call the two years I ache the most for 'childhood' because they are my eighth and ninth grade years (including the summers before and between them.)

Eighth grade was prime time. The summer before I went to my first Vans Warped Tour and saw every pop punk band that I was gushing over at the time. Namely, Good Charlotte. But it was a bonus that Sugarcult, New Found Glory, and Taking Back Sunday was included as well. This was the first time that I had ever really been submersed in any sort of culture. In my tiny town in Northern Michigan, the most we get are the mall metal kids. You know, black pants with the chains and straps hanging off of them, mesh shirts over wife beaters, and make up that could make anyone scratch their heads and ask what was up with the fuckery. At Warped Tour though, I guess I kind of saw how that shit was really done. Never had I been in a place where people were so different, each one more Trash Punk than the other, yet everyone got along. No one cared if I was the 13 year old girl whose less-than-skinny stomach kept falling out of my too short Tim Burton t-shirt. No one cared if the kid next to them was wearing eyeliner. No one cared that there was a mass of 20,000 people screaming profanities and throwing their middle fingers up in there. (Let me just add, that this past summer at Warped Tour was the worst one I have been do. Did anyone else notice the noticable increase of douche bags in the crowd?)

That first Warped Tour shaped me.

Then the year of eighth grade in itself was just amazing. I had a great group of friends, and my best friend at the time lives just a quarter mile away from my house. On the snow days that were announced the day before, we'd go to her house and stay up until midnight making ridiculous videos and watch Maury. We'd have dance parties. We'd go sledding and rip around the yard on her fourwheeler, pulling a sled along behind. The guys from Jackass were pretty much our heroes. If we flipped over the sled and cut up our hands or arms, or got a bruise in the process - it was that much better. We'd skateboard in the summer, listening to new music that we had found on Purevolume (this was before Myspace became some sort of music haven) and trying our hardest to do the tricks that we taught ourselves.

Ninth grade was even better. I had a large group of friends. If I had a bonfire, there'd be atleast twenty people there. A majority of my friends then were older, too. Call me sheltered, but it was a rush of sorts to ride around in a car with an older boy. Not because it was a guy, but because I was pretty much forbidden to ride in cars with boys then. We'd blare music, drive around town with the windows rolled open. I will never forget summer nights spent at the band shell, the boys actually climbing up on the bandshell and scaring the hell out of me. Laying around in the lawn at the park. Taco Bell late at night. I was even in a band for a day. I had gotten a bass guitar, and made it through one band practice with three of my friends. We wrote a song, were proud of it, and then never got back together again.

The best day of my life took place in ninth grade. A group of fifteen of us went out to lunch at Mandarin Garden. This date was a pretty big deal, because we had planned it a week ahead, and most of our plans had a two hour notice. It started out good, too. My friend had his mom's van, and we whipped around the streets on the way there. After our lunch, we went downtown and played Capture the Flag for hours. Each team had a whole city block to hide and jail people. There was no drama. And I found the entire thing pretty exciting. I don't know if anyone else who was there realized how great of a day that was, but I loved it.

Now that I'm a senior, I think that everything kind of pales in comparison to things I used to do. I love sitting around and watching movies with my friends, but I think that being lazy at home, and then going to a friends house to be just as lazy is starting to catch up with me. I feel like I should be living more.

Dear friends, it's our last year together. Let's start making it top everything else.