No! Drugs are Bad

       As a young person, you usually don’t notice the way your “friends” can change the way you see things, the way you do things, the way you speak, the way you dress. Only teenagers get influenced and changed in most cases, unless you happen to be me. I befriended a group of teenage girls the summer before I started the second grade. Our brothers played in the same local baseball team, that is how we first met. We would hang out every Tuesday and Thursday while the boys practiced in the field. Two of the girls were 15 and one of them was 16. I used to feel I cool for hanging out with them because they said bad words and they dressed like the girls that came out on tv, but all the adults thought they had good intentions. They would act one way with adults and another way with their friends. It seemed like they lived two different lives, and I thought that was as cool as Hannah Montana.
The night of the last game of the season, I was seated next to my parents on the bleachers coloring when one of the younger girls asked me if I wanted to hang out with them Before I could say anything my mom said “yes go ahead, I’ll take care of your stuff”. They took me to the store across the street from the park to buy candy. When we got there, each girl went in different directions and they stuffed small candies and ships inside their purses.  The older one convinced the cashier to sell her cigarettes and then we walked out.
      We went back to the park, but we didn’t go in. Instead, we went to the parking lot where their friends were. The older girl rushed straight to a boy who I guessed was her boyfriend and they went inside a car. Why would she like a boy who looks like that? He looks like he likes setting things on fire. The other two sat down on the sidewalk and one of the boys gave them some pills. I remembered when me and my brother pretended to do pills with Smarties, but this wasn’t Smarties they used. “No, drugs are bad” I told them. They all looked at me and laughed hysterically. I ran away to my mom as the first grader I was and never saw any of them again after that night.
“The three of them had kids before turning 18, and one of the younger ones went to prison” my mom, who friended one of their moms on Facebook, told me. Even today, I still have friends who do drugs and it makes me upset. However I always find myself liking “druggies”  and now I understand why she would like a boy who looks like he likes to set things on fire. I didn’t have a rebellious teenager phase or a scene phase and I think I never will, because I saw it happening at a young age. Personally, I think the whole “Oh my god dad, you don’t understand me!” thing is stupid.  Sometimes I feel like I went from child directly to old lady.