Here's my Card

Going through Jr. High and High School I had four guys I would consider my best friends. We were always out running around together. We spent hours upon hours playing basketball at my house and a few of the local parks. We practiced plays and drills like crazy. We had zero aspirations of playing college ball but a "sweet victory" over some local punks at City Park was enough to satisfy our egos. We played until the sun went down and the game usually continued for a few hours after that (as long as dad allowed me to turn on the flood lights).

We shared many conversations during those basketball games and even more when they were over. We talked about girls, school, jobs, families, other people, church, our mistakes, our hopes, and girls. I can honestly say I probably had the biggest laughs of my teenage years during those times. We made fun of each other. We laughed about girls we had dated. We were shocked at our similar teenage parental struggles and we pretty much figured out life and all of it's problems (if only I had transcripts of those conversations!).

Of course there were times when we got mad at each other (some because of basketball related "fouls" or a losing streak). We did what most teenage guys did...we didn't talk about it and hung out with the other guys in our group until we forgot what we were mad about. We all shared a similar sense of humor but different enough that we could catch each other off guard.

Humor is really the point of this post. I was going through a desk at my parent's house and found a birthday card that one of my above compatriots purchased me. I'm not sure which birthday it was but I know it was 15-17 years range. I'm not sure why I kept it but I think, somewhere deep in my subconscious, I knew someday there would be an outlet to share this with the world.

Without further adu:

Here is the front...

And the inside...

In case you are at all curious, "YF" stands for "Your Friend." We were already using texting shorthand before it was mainstream popular. Another reason we were so cool.

Now, I've blacked out the name for security purposes. He could be a United States Senator now, but I'm not telling.