I started writing this and it went in an entirely different direction than I intended. But I thought aout it and it made a huge impact on who I was at the time I met Rob. I can't guarantee that everything happened exactly the way I remember it, but, for better or worse,  this is what I can remember.

I grew up in a small town. There weren't even any fast food places, it was so small. There wasn't anything to do. So mostly, we drove around the country and drank. I don't especially like beer, so I didn't drink as much as some of my friends, but they were usually happy to oblige and get me something else. I'm a pretty smart person (I think) and I knew that I was just wasting time, but what else was there to do?

My sophomore year in high school, one of my friends came back to school in town. I grew up with him, but hadn't really gotten to know him that well until that year. He was always labeled a "troublemaker". His parents had taken him out of the school and sent him to another town's Catholic school for a couple years to see if it would get better. I'm not sure why (probably tuition costs), but he came back to my school that year. We had something in common. My mom had sent me to the same Catholic school for a couple years, because she knew that the school system in my town sucked.

No, this guy wasn't my current husband. His name was Tim. Just hang in there, I'm getting to the point.

Tim was in my World History class that year, and since there were only 4 of us in class, we talked quite a bit.  We started hanging out after school some. Mostly, we talked on the phone after we were both supposed to be asleep. He was not stupid by any means, but the teachers and, really, the whole town thought he was a troublemaker and didn't really want to deal with him. I don't remember our conversations exactly. There wasn't anything special, just friends talking. I know that he was depressed sometimes, but who isn't in high school? Yes, we partied some too. I remember one time that he had drank too much, and needed to puke. He started to walk out of the barn (we were in the middle of a cornfield in someone's barn) and stopped and came back for his beer so he would have something to drink after throwing up. It makes me a little sad to think that that is one of my strongest memories of him. He had his arms out and walks kinda bouncing while he was walking out to the beat of a Counting Crows song. To this day he always comes to mind when I hear Counting Crows.

Anyway, Tim had enough problems in school that he decided to go to an alternative school. It was for people who had discipline problems in regular school. I don't know if it was his idea or his parents, but he was kinda excited to be going. He thought he'd get a fresh start and get school over with and behind him. I ran into him that summer after he hadn't talked for a while. I asked him when he was leaving and if he had his new address yet. We talked for a long time and that night we set it up so I'd call him after everyone was asleep. We talked some more and he told me that hardly anyone even remembered he was leaving and that no one seemed to care. He was really down about it. He promised me that he'd give me his address when he got there.

Tim came by the night before he was leaving. He wanted me to go out driving around with him a little while. My mom didn't want to let me go that night, because it was a school night. She gave in since Time was leaving town, but I still had to be back early. I don't remember exactly what happened, because it wasn't anything special. It was just a normal night. One of his friends was with him and one of my friends was with me. Tim was driving his mom's car which was very nice, but I don't know anything about cars, so I don't know what kind it was. It was a stick-shift though. I remember that because Jackie couldn't drive a stick, so Tim and I sat in the passenger side together and let Jackie drive for a while. We went out in the country and had a couple shots of vodka. I had some leftover from another time. It wasn't very much. We got his mom's car all dirty from the gravel roads. When he dropped me off at home, he told me he was gong to wash the car and go home and I should call him in 30-45 minutes. I called and his brother answered. I called back 15 minutes or so later, and I don't remember who answered, but I could tell something was different. Whoever talked to me on the phone sounded more awake than they should have been at that time of the night. I knew something was wrong, but had no idea what happened.

The next morning, I found out that Tim had run into some other friends on the square. They had all gone drinking and Tim had missed curfew. His dad was pissed, so he came in town looking for him. They had a fight, and his dad went home. Tim was supposed to follow. He didn't. Instead, he went down another road and took a  corner too fast and flipped the car into a ditch. He died.

At that point, my life changed. I realized that the life I was living wasn't what I wanted. I was 16. We went to his funeral, and that night a bunch of people went out drinking in the country "in memory of Tim". Didn't they realize that driving drunk was what killed him? That he was on his way home and would have been fine if he hadn't stopped to "have a couple beers". I'm not going to say that I never went drinking again, but I do know that I had a DD after that sometimes, and I had never done that before. I tried to change a little. But it's really hard to do in a small town. I had grown up with all these people. They were my friends. You can't really make a major change when everybody knows you and expects certain things. At least I couldn't.

A couple months later (or maybe not even that much. I don't really remember) my mom got offered a job as a prison guard 3 hours south of where I grew up. She told me about it and expected me to be upset. Who would want to switch schools in the middle of their junior year? She was surprised when I jumped at the chance. We moved in December and it sucked moving away form all that I had grown up with. But I got a chance to make a fresh start. To reinvent myself. To be someone I chose to be and not someone that everyone else expected me to be.

I joined quiz bowl. I made friends with better people. They weren't deliberately making bad decisions daily. They were smart. They didn't drink. They didn't know who I had been, and I was able to make a new life. That's where I met my husband...