Recall Essay

            
             Growing up is a series of personal changes. Usually the most noticeable are the physical changes, but there often seems to be changes that happen at a deeper level. These deep changes in character, morals, and spiritual being seem to not be in any correlation with the physical changes. But maturity in these areas is a true indication of growing up. One needs to make decisions on their own and learn from the consequences in order for deeper changes to occur.
             In elementary school, everyone was friends unconditionally. You talked to everyone as if no one person was better than another. Somehow, once you got to the junior high level, different groups had started to form and status labels began to dictate your set of friends. This usually puts a tremendous amount of pressure on being accepted. This pressure sometimes leads to the use of drugs, initiations into gangs, and dressing in a particular style. .
             When entering my teens, my desire to be accepted out weighed any other desire. Many of my close friends from elementary school began to get involved in mischievous dealings. The summer right after 6th grade, I was offered to smoke Weed and I succumbed. The occurrences began to occur more frequently, and so did the number of times I got involved with what they were doing. My complete junior high career was a downward spiral. Skipping classes became common and my grades began to drop even more. My parents didn't think much of it, because my grades were never good, I guess they just figured I was dumb. It's not that they didn't care about me, but almost the opposite, they cared too much to harass me about my school performance. In any case, I took advantage of their trust and did things I shouldn't have. .
             The severity of the ordeals I was getting involved in began to get progressively worse as the days went by. Somehow I managed to rarely get caught doing something illegal, and when I did get caught I always was able to get out of it or keep my parents from finding out.