Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are.

• My mother use to tell me this all the time while I was growing up, and it became a sort of mantra for her when I was a teenager.

• If you asked me at the time, I would say she is like a scratched record, always repeating the same line of the song. (Yes I am old enught to remember vinyl records! LOL )

• But she persisted, and gradually it sunk in...

• I learned that what my dad liked to say was true; "birds of a feather, flock together."

I learned that not only did people judge you by the company you kept, but they were right.

Not me

• I wasn't gifted with introspection as a teen, but extrospection I had plenty.
  I could see the faults of others readily, but my own were a hidden from me for a time..

• But later, as a I looked at my friends and spoke to girls I was dating, I realized that the traits I saw in my friends were also my traits.

• It was a eye opening discovery; whomever I hang out with, they become like me, and I become like them.

• Sadly I must admit I first used this observation to start hanging out with people who were better at certain sports then I and I saw that I improved.

• Then I started hanging out with guys who were better at getting girls attention then I, and soon therafter learned the good ways to get attention and the bad ways.

• These were important lessons for sure, but slowly I also learned that if someones behavior made me uncomfortable, I shouldn't hand out with them, because pretty soon that behavior would become my behavior.

• A case in point is a guy who swore a lot.

I learned that hanging out with someone who swears a lot slowly changes your vocabulary!

And suddenly you find youself swearing at the most inopportune time, like in front of your parents.

Not good.

• Thankfully, my mother kept repeating her mantra, and so did my dad, until eventually I realized this was a form of a Super Power.

Yep, I could remake myself, get better grades, become a better basketball player and even learn how to make the girls smile and go to the movies with me! Hurray!

Yep, sitting in the dark with a cute girl, who inches closer and closer to me during a scary movie was teenage bliss.

• Life, it is a learning experience, if we keep our eyes open and just think about what's going on right in front of us.

@shortsegments