16 Things We Forget To Thank Our High School Friends For

1. The fact that no matter how much time or distance separates you, you always return back home to laugh about the same dumb things that you’re pretty sure only you guys find funny.

2. Being the only people to truly have as much hometown pride as you do, even when you’re hometown is less than noteworthy. You made the best of it, and it holds a really special place in your heart, in all it’s ghetto, middle-of-nowhere, slightly trashy, ultimately endearing glory.

3. All the long and posed Photo Booth sessions from which you got some of your best profile pictures from.

4. Staying with you through that one heartbreak that you made much too big a deal over, with that one person who you are absolutely humiliated to say you ever even liked, let alone dated. They know. They were there. They hung around anyway.

5. Befriending our parents on a first-name basis.

6. Being able to communicate very well with just emojis/facial expressions/whines. Still. 

7. Being the only people who we can talk to about how all those random classmates from high school turned out.

8. Wanting to hangout with you even before you could go get drinks and your parents’ still had to drive you to the movies. That’s not convenience-level friends, that is love. 

9. All the inside jokes that are still somehow funny.

10. Writing notes and giving them to one another throughout the school day.

11. The mix CDs you still have sitting in your car somewhere.

12. All the rides when you were the one who didn’t have a car, the coffees in the morning they brought you, the times they lent you a few dollars for lunch, sitting around on Friday nights just laughing about nothing and talking through most classes with complete irreverence for whatever was actually happening.

13. Exposing us to the wonders of the world, including but not limited to: Forever 21, how to mix a drink, how to properly and most flatteringly pose for a picture and discreetly Photoshop yourself, what Picnik was and how to flirt via texting “talking.”

14. All the impromptu sex education and for all the times you talked about something super intimate you did like it was as common as discussing the weather.

15. For being the only people in the world to not judge how much you ate on any given night/fast food/pizza run.

16. Still never losing touch, after all these years.

Part time writer. Full time bad ass bitch. Brunch-having New Yorker.