Are you Jimmy Ray?

Come back in time with me about 8 years...



The weather in Orem, Utah in July of 1998 was gorgeous. It's gorgeous every other year as well, but we are specifically thinking about this one. Blue skies, a few scattered clouds, and temperatures ranging from the 80's to the low 100's. I had just finished eighth grade and was turning 14-years-old that summer. Two of my sisters were pregnant that summer: Elizabeth with Caroline and Suzanne with Abigail.

I was almost 5'9", had shoulder-length light brown hair (natural), and was attempting to grow my bangs out but had no aesthetic sense so they mostly self-parted in the center and hung to the sides of my face. Not my best look.

I had more friends from school that year than ever before. It was the summer of STABRJR -- Jeremy's name for our group of: Susannah, Troy, Amy, Brittany, Ryan, Jeremy, and Robb. We did things together almost every weekend. Troy had a crush on Amy and gave her a rose and a note saying "Sometimes good friends need to be reminded how special they are." We laughed, hard. That was so mean of us.
I saw the Backstreet Boys in concert at the E Center that summer with my friend, Aleesa, and her friend Desirae. I loved that.

I went down to the Provo River quite a few times that summer. We would either ride our bikes or rollerskate from the gas station at the Orem/Provo border down to the dam. I was always faaaaar too wimpy to slide down the side of the dam, but I cheered my friends on as they did it. Same thing with the rope swing.
One time, on the way home from the river, Brittany and I got wobbly on our rollerblades and her front wheel careened into mine and we both went down hard. I landed in the gravel on the side of the path, where my head hit a large rock. I had a huge bleeding scrape from my knee to mid-thigh. Brit got off better than I did, with only a few scratches here and there.

I don't think I had a birthday party that year. I hadn't had much of one the year before, either. (Richard and Suzanne had gotten married two days before my birthday so my cousins were in town and so no party for me.) But I do think it was the year that Robby gave me a Got Milk? Cookie Monster poster (because I had started my collection of the ads by then) and my dad gave me a Hanson calendar and some daisies...I think.

Brittany and I went to Harmons a lot. A lot. I'm pretty sure that was the summer it opened. I remember trying to cash a check at their customer service counter and they kept asking for my drivers license. I told them I did not have one because I was 13. They had a lot of difficulty believing me. (Well at 5'9" who wouldn't?)
We went to Harmons every Saturday. We bought junk every time. Usually a soda pop and a Bop magazine (to plaster my already quite full walls with more posters).
Brit and I "laid out" a few times. We thought it would be a good idea to rub ourselves with baby oil and lay, half naked, in the middle of my yard with a bunch of magazines. I wasn't out there very long, which was good news for my neighbors. It just got far too hot and insects were sticking to our oiled limbs.

We watched a lot of MTV that summer. I was very into pop music. Amy was obsessed with Madonna, so we listened to her often.
The movie Spice World came out that year. I was definitely a fan. I still love that movie, actually. One of my favorite songs of that summer was "Are You Jimmy Ray?" by Jimmy Ray--which, now that I think about it, is a really really dumb song.

We tried to play tennis quite a few times. What is the point of having a tennis court in your yard if you don't play? I am horrible at that game. I got sick of chasing that dang little yellow ball around quickly.
We pulled out my CD player and plugged it into the outlet on the spotlight above the court. We blasted all of our favorite songs throughout the neighborhood while attempting to be athletic on the SportCourt. We usually gave up and ended up just playing on my big swing set, with the music still blasting.




Fast forward 8 years...

STABRJR is definitely no more. Troy just got back from Iraq and is going to UVSC. Amy is going to BYU, and her 22nd birthday was on Tuesday. Brittany got married this past fall and is living in Idaho, studying nursing at BYU-I. Ryan got married sometime last year or the year before, I hadn't talked to him since the beginning of high school. I have no idea what Jeremy is up to, as I have not seen him since the last day of high school. Robb lives in Salt Lake somewhere, I don't know what he is up to. Sad, really, because we all had a lot of fun together.

I sit 6 hours away from all of my high school friends. Gone are the silly days of rollerblading to the grocery store and the boyband posters. I haven't had the desire to oil up and lay in the boiling sun in quite a while.

Sometimes I wish I could go back.

I wonder if my rollerblades still fit.