The Bad Girl's Club

Yesterday, I had lunch with a group of "girls" that were in high school together. Some of us were good friends then, some of us have just connected. There are two common denominators that pull us together. One is Facebook...where we can all meet and talk smack...living a persona that really doesn't play out so vividly in everyday reality. The second is our age. We're all in the same decade of our life cycle. When we are all together, either at lunch or on Facebook, we can free ourselves from the daily grind. Sarcasm is the escape...it rules in cyberland. One friend has said if a reader can't take it, then do her a favor and de-friend her. I agree. Don't get me wrong...while Facebook is a hotbed for our arrogance, ego punches, and laughter (usually at someone else's expense), it is also a place to bring our biggest concerns and worries. The group is the first place to post a request for help....it may come in the form of prayer or a ride home from the bar (lol). But in only seconds the home team forms the huddle and the one in need is protected.

So what does this have to do with my blogging about my growing up? Well, maybe not much or maybe a lot.

A few of these same "girls" have spent time at my house. If they didn't, then mutual friends did....Also, during our time together, it seems we have found another commonality....We were all raised in pretty much the same way...Small town values, middle class, hard working parents and so forth. We all had pretty much the same experiences. Where we went and who we went with often overlapped, and still do.

So when we begin telling our tales, we don't necessarily have to back all the way up to paint the picture...we have a foundation to lay the framework of a story, experience or wise-crack.

There was rarely a weekend at my house, when there wasn't a group of friends spending the night. Actually, if they weren't at my house, then I was at theirs. We rotated from house to house.

At my house, in Keith, which was way far out in the country....We piled our bodies arm to arm on the floor. Sometimes, we'd make a train, of sorts, by putting our heads on each other's stomachs to play the "ha ha game", until we were all giggling so hard that we didn't even know what was funny. My parent's bedroom shared a wall with mine, so most nights, my mother would threaten to come in and sleep on the floor with us to shut us up. Now that I look back, she probably didn't care that much and would've been happy to just go to the den and sleep on the couch....(or the untouchable living room). I imagine that it was my dad, who was saying to her, to make those girls shut up.......

While my room was small and not near as elaborate as the rooms I design today, it was my haven....my own little space that was MINE! I could do anything to that space. My sister and a lot of my friends took to putting up posters and using straight pins to tac ticket stubs, dried carnations from boys, pictures, ribbons..and whatever other memorabilia they collected to cover their bedroom walls. I didn't know what an interior designer was..and maybe it was undiagnosed OCD...but my walls were always freshly painted and un-adorned with anything but HODA lights(don't ask). I kept all the memorabilia too...but it was inconspicuously stuck to the BACK of the door.

I compared my home to my friend's and most of the time, I felt like my life was inadequate...They had new houses, showers, wall-to-wall carpet, subdivisions, pools, custom made draperies..... and some even had a telephone IN THEIR BEDROOM (We had a party line...google it!) It didn't occur to me that we were probably all doing the same thing...spending our best years comparing ourselves to others.

Now that I am in a position to assist young teens in designing their own rooms, I try to pull from my own experiences. Mostly, I encourage their parents to acknowledge that the bedroom is his/her own space. It's a sacred retreat where they do most of their dreaming, maturing and growing. It is important to me that the teen is able to enter a space that will reflect who they are now and who they will become.