High school was, for me, a period of time when I felt absolutely invinceable. I will never forget one New Year's Eve that I told my parents that I was going to my friends house and my friend told her parents that I was going to her house. Instead, we hopped on a bus to Denver for the night, which was about 45 minutes away from where we lived in Boulder. We met all kinds of people, went some random places...and missed our bus back home. We had $20 to our name and were able to find a motel room to spend the rest of the night (about 4 hours) in. There were cockroaches in the bathroom, it was in a bad part of town, it was...kind of creepy. When we awoke the next morning and got ready to leave, we looked around for the room keys. They were found as we exited - they were IN the keyhole, OUTSIDE the room. Talk about unsafe.
As I read the book Testimony by Anita Shreve, I was reminded how stupid teenagers can be, how flippant they can be with their lives. I was lucky - this incident didn't end in tragedy. Oh, and I DID get caught by my parents. It was the one and only time I was ever grounded by my parents. (Not that I didn't do other things in high school that were ground-worthy, but they used the guilt method of discipline for the most part.)
This post is part of Silicon Valley Moms Group's book club for June. Join in the discussion on DC Metro Moms Blog and read what others have to say about the book.
