High school was an interesting time for me.
I actually went to several different high schools and had a multitude of different friends from different cliques and different walks of life.
When I was just turning 17 I was attending school in a rather rough area. The strange thing was that we lived in a very nice house in a ritzy part of town at this time. However, the end of our street, where we lived, was zoned for the worst of the schools. My friend on the other side was zoned for the best school in the area.
Zoning laws make no good sense.
Source: Pixabay.com
Nevertheless, I was who I was and I lived life my way no matter where I was.
I actually found a nice group of friends who smoked cigarettes around the back of the red brick building during lunch. I used to dress all in black, had long hair that was shaved on the sides, and wore long chains with boots. I was a real bundle of joy back then.
Still, despite being different from most of the roughneck jocks, each of us had our own unique friendships.
One of those relationships for me was with a guy named Bradley Johnson.
Bradley was a nice kid with an unfortunate weight problem. He used to try to buy friendships with things like money, taking people out to lunch, and giving people tickets to various events.
I liked him because he was fun to be around.
One day Bradley's parents got divorced. His father lived near the school but his mom moved to place called Kennedale. Kennedale was about 45 minutes from our neighborhood. It was quite a long drive.
It was determined that Bradley would spend the weekends with his mom, which meant that he was never able to hang out anymore. This was particular distressing for Bradley because he had recently found himself in a relationship with a very attractive young girl. She didn't seem to care about his weight problem.
"Good for him!" I thought at the time, and I meant it. He was a great guy and it was really cool that a girl was able to see him for who he really was, despite the fact that he was over 400 lbs.
As matter fact, his girlfriend was really hot. She was a blond girl who had gone out for cheerleading and not made it....... but she still looked like your typical cheerleader. She was tall and thin with a great body and a pretty face to match. Most of the guys at school didn't get it. It made sense to me though. Bradley was just that cool.
One day Bradley pulled me aside and asked me if I would do him a favor on the weekends.
"On the weekends?" I asked. "Like every weekend?"
"Well trust me, there's something in it for you." he said.
"If you drive Chelsea out here on any given Friday, I will give you $30 when you get here. Then you stay for the weekend, you have full access to my house....... you can eat all of my food and do whatever you want. Then you can just take her back either Saturday or Sunday. Great deal right?"
It really was a great deal because even without the $30, Bradley's house in Kennedale was freaking fantastic and getting to stay there and have full access to it was awesome. He had tons of good food, a pool, a trampoline, and all kinds of video games. It was basically like staying at a really cool resort for the weekend.
There were tons of girls over there all the time too!
I was always excited to go see Bradley over the weekend. Now, I didn't get to do it all the time because, of course, I had my own life as well.... but I did go over there as often as possible.
This is the first of a series of stories that will detail my adventures in Kennedale.
There were good times. There were bad times. There were happy times. There were sad times.
As I said earlier, I went to several different high schools and had several different sets of adventures throughout my teenage journey, but I think Kennedale was among my favorites.
I hope you'll be excited to read about all of those times in the upcoming chapters of The Kennedale Adventures.
