For a fairly corporate job, mine has occasionally required its fair share of navel gazing.  I’ve taken more than a few personality tests, each one confirming that I have a few very strong traits that influence how I work. I didn’t need a test to tell me I’m incredibly loyal to people who do a good job. Nor did I need one to point out my  exceptionally strong sense of RESPONSIBILITY. I put it in all caps because whenever I get the results of one of these assessments, that’s how it’s printed: RESPONSIBILITY. As in, if I tell you I am going to do something, I will do it. As in, if I don’t, I will torture myself until the end of my days, using my lack of RESPONSIBILITY as proof of my essential lack of worth as a human being.

This makes me an exceptional pet sitter. It also means I am likely to stay with you in the ambulance ride to the hospital after you break your femur while we’re testing our Supergirl capes as we jump off the roof. For example.  It also means I am extremely unlikely to miss a deadline at work, unless you and I both know you assigned me a false deadline because I procrastinate with reckless abandon, making people like you – THAT kind of person – exceptionally crazy.

What I can’t reconcile is my strong sense of RESPONSIBILITY and my high school years of juvenile delinquency.

Running errands a few towns away tonight, my husband and I passed Honeyhill Road. Back in the day, my best friend and I were obsessed with Honeyhill Road. Relative to our ‘burb, it’s in the land of the uberwealthy. It’s in horse country. It’s across the state line. It’s backs up to a huge nature preserve. It’s where my best friend’s slightly older boyfriend (now her husband of 20+ years) used to go when he cut class when he was a senior. Like moths to a flame, we had to go there too. As soon as I got my driver’s license, off we went. Cutting classes. Skipping school completely. And this was a regular event. It’s no wonder I have the recurring nightmare about taking a high school math test I didn’t know about.  How was I supposed to know about this shit when I was never there?

I don’t even know why we were cutting classes to go specifically to Honeyhill Road. It’s not like we were drinking (during daylight hours, anyway) or doing drugs. We took a vow of sobriety our senior year, abstaining from both alcohol and Entenmann’s until the swim season was over. After liberally overindulging in alcohol and chocolate chip cookies, I’ve never thrown up as much as I did the night States were over. One of the few times I remember feeling more ill was as we drove home from a college visit. We went to meet with our future coach (who completely forgot to meet with us) and I came down with an awful bug and a 103 degree fever. Our moms were convinced I was sick from too much alcohol; in fact I had strep.

We both studied hard enough to get into the university of our choice, where we lived right across the quad from each other. If she leaned out her window, we could see each other from our dorm rooms. There was no need for two tin cans and some twine when we could simply walk the 30 second divide between us. With the exception of The Lost Weekend at UPenn spring of our junior year, we largely stayed out of trouble. We often went to class.

How we made it out of high school with a good enough GPA to get into any university, I’ll never know.

What I remember about those days spent at the end of Honeyhill Road were the dreams. The endless talk about what we’d do when we grew up, how we’d live, what our lives would be like. How completely disconnected we felt from high school and how ready we were to move on to what was next. And the cold. Ohmygod, it’s freakin’ cold in Connecticut for the majority of the school year. There we were, sitting under endless acres of pine trees i in November. And again in January. January! March was no better. In retrospect, maybe we should have decided to see every movie put out during our junior and senior years, rather than sitting on pine needles ruminating on life until we couldn’t feel our toes and had to retreat to the paltry heat of my Chevy Chevette’s heater.

Maybe my sense of RESPONSIBILITY came into play in making sure we both made it out of high school alive and with our sanity intact.

Or maybe these corporate tests don’t actually test for some of the other important qualities. Like FRIENDSHIP. And SENSE OF HUMOR. And ADVENTURE. And COMPLETE AND UTTER LACK OF COMMON SENSE.

I wouldn’t give anything for those wasted hours. And I’m definitely implanting my children with tracking devices when they’re fourteen. Because the time we snuck out of another friend’s house with the car keys and the car without so much as a learner’s permit our freshman year of high school? And how my best friend’s parents drove by us in the Friendly’s parking lot and caught us red handed? I’d have a hard time coming up with how RESPONSIBILITY came into play that night.