Day 132 : Friends

Sadie -

Today I got to talking to my friend Teresa at work. She has a daughter who is 12 and who is having trouble with her friends. It seems her little girl is insistent on spending time with kids who are mean and get into trouble, and as much as Teresa tries to warn her daughter about these issues, the daughter doesn't want to listen.

This conversation made me think about a couple of things:

1) I remember how concerned I was as a teenager about having cool friends. I think all teenagers go through this. I know that when I was younger, I sometimes I made stupid decisions just because I wanted to impress the wrong people.

2) I, of course, flash-forwarded in my mind to you as a young adolescent, and tried to imagine how I would convince you to stop hanging out with the wrong crowd. In a perfect world you would either never make a bad decision (because you are perfect, right?); or you would listen to my advice and stop yourself from making bad decisions, as tempting as they might be.

But it is not a perfect world. (And as hard as it is for me to admit this right now, you probably aren't perfect either!)

I realize that sometimes you'll have to make bad decisions about who your friends are, and all I can do is try to guide you and hope that you learn from the bad decisions and start to make good ones.

Right now I am going to try not to think about all of these complex "grown-up" issues and go make you some bottles!

- Dad