My Favorite Things

It just so happens that JT stands for a several of my favorite things.

Anyone who spends any time with me knows I am absolutely crazy about Justin Timberlake. We regularly turn on the house speaker system and dance around like idiots to his tunes filling the house.It’s one of my favorite ways to get some exercise and stretches while at home. Those in my inner circle are constantly sending my updates and JT sightings. I got calls, Justin is golfing at the Pro-Am on ESPN, Justin is on Oprah talking about his new clothing line, the golf course he’s building in Memphis, his restaurant he and his Grandma opened up...He inspired one of my first and most infamous blog posts on “Bringing Sexy Back” (August 2, 2008).

Then there is James Taylor. I’ve listened to him ever since I emerged from my high school haze of hard rock. His song writing and performing are classics and continues on to this day. He often puts me in a melancholy mood because of all the things I associate with his songs from certain phases of my life. Is there really anyone alive in America who isn’t familiar with a couple of his hit songs? I fondly recall a concert at an outdoor venue where James walked on to stage wearing blue jeans, a chunky cable knit sweater and barefoot.
My favorite song of his is Fire & Rain, “I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain. I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end. I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend, but I always thought I’d see you again”.

JT are the initials of one of my best friends from junior high school. We both had french together with M.Monsuer for 7-9th grade at Vogel Junior High School in Garden City, Mi. Janet was kind of geeky with glasses, not athletic at all but we still  got along like nobody's business. I was more of the free spirit active type but we were both smart cookies. We had some gifted classes together. The main thing I remember about my classmates in the “gifted” program was that we were extremely efficient in getting our work done and were smart enough to figure out how to mess around at school without getting caught.

She had a very conservative, large family versus my small 2 child family where I was the delight of my mother. Janet was kind of a middle child and to me she seemed to be lost in the shuffle. Of course that is coming from an adolescent perspective. Now that I am the mother of a large family I would probably view that situation differently. We would sit at school events and subtly mock our classmates in french. If we didn’t know the correct word we would just make one up, so we had our own friendspeak that only the two of us understood. Janet was the first person I knew who kept a calendar of what outfit she wore in her school planner. I adopted that idea. We documented what outfits we wore each day so we would not wear the same thing too often. It’s not like we were fashionistas way back in the day. We were not Beverly Hllls It Girls, but still we had our standards.

Due to school boundaries we ended up in 2 different high schools. Looking back, I realize now that I was separated from a lot of really valuable friends due to that split. One of them was Janet. We managed to maintain our friendship through high school, although I’m sure it would have been a different world for us if we had been in high school together. We might have been a formidable (tres formidable) force together but instead we were cross town rivals.

Janet was there when I married my high school sweetheart. A little over a year later my husband and I drove home from the hospital with our 6 hour old baby, we stopped at a traffic light and I spied Janet in the car next to us. I held up the baby, and motioned for her to follow us and she helped celebrate the homecoming. A few years later I was the support person for her daughter's birth. Her husband rushed home from working in another state and together we helped Janet bring forth her first baby. Another two years and my hands caught their second daughter as she entered this world after a short, intense labor at home. My occupation at the time was an obstetric nurse, so I had her back.

Several years later my mother died. I was devastated. All too soon we (as in 3 kids under the age of 6) moved to Chicago for my husband’s job. There is a large chunk of time missing from my memory of that time period and I don’t know what happened to me and Janet. Was there an incident which changed things or did we just grow apart? I honestly don’t know. I figure my amnesia probably was my psyche’s method of keeping me sane at a time I could have so easily lost it.

I’ve been to a few high school reunions over the years (or more specifically decades) but because we went to different high schools that has not been an effective way to track Janet. I know I could use the Jack Bauer side of my persona to ferret her out if I really want to. Sometimes I want to but I realize my procrastination is probably due to fear of disappointment should it not work out the way I’d envision it if we were to meet up again. So, maybe I’ll leave it to fate. I know, that’s kind of a weak response. I going to have to ruminate on this a while longer and see what happens.

Place your gaze upon the  movie poster for the next installment  from the Just Twilight series...kind of a stretch I'll admit. A cheesey one at that.

Now, if Robert Pattinson, Ambien, Dexter and Blueberry Stoli & Soda started with the initials JT I’d have a truly complete list.

Comments

[The Mother]

I have a great friend from high school that I haven't seen in a very long time. I guess it's time to look her up, huh?

[Princess numero uno]

A reason, A season, or A lifetime. Sometimes hard to decipher who fits into which bucket....but I have fond memories of Janet.