I got over my first Break Up in a couple of days and a relieved sense of freedom took over. I was happy to be free from my non-dating, dating relationship that I was never quite sure what to do with anyway.

My friends and I continued on in true Jr. high fashion to have all kinds of confusing crushes and experiences with rumors of returned affections and rejections in folded up notes passed between friends.

Thanks to my sixth grade boyfriend I had discovered the world of talking to boys on the phone and I loved it. In Jr. High I spent much more time getting to know the boys in my class on the phone at night, than I was able to while at school.  At school the boys had to keep up their reputations. They were too busy teasing and cracking jokes to carry on a real conversation with a girl.

Even though I wanted to be popular, wanted to talk to boys, and wanted to be liked by everyone, being outgoing and interesting didn’t come naturally to me. I approached talking to boys on the phone with a lot of thought and purpose, hoping to win them over and cause them to like me.  Before I would call them, and just in case they would call me, I kept a notebook by the phone in my room filled with lists of questions I could ask, and things I could talk about to keep the conversation interesting. I didn’t want to have any awkward moments of silence.

I had plenty of girlfriends who weren’t allowed to call boys on the phone but at my house there were hardly ever any rules. My mom always felt that I had such a strong will, that if she buckled down and bound me in by a bunch of rules, I would completely rebel. Instead her mantra while raising me was to carefully “Pick her battles” and talking on the phone and curfews were never two of the things she put restrictions on.

Girlfriends who had restrictions at their house about talking to boys on the phone got to enjoy conversations with them while staying the night with me. After we would hang up, we would day dream about who we wished would ask us out, give us a single red rose, or be the giver of our first kiss. We even came up with code names so we could write about the boys in notes at school and if found no one would know who we were talking about. Each boy had a secret name and each boy had at least one popular song from the radio that if brought up amongst us girls we knew exactly which crush it referred to.

I am so grateful that most of the conversations from those Jr. High phone calls never turned into complicated romantic relationships, but instead produced true and lasting friendships with now, men, who have become like brothers from my childhood. To this day some of those boys from Jr. high remain cherished among my Facebook friends and I often see them a couple times a year at get-togethers.

Those boys have filled my prayers for over two decades as I have watched them become husbands, fathers, creative entrepreneurs, and ministers of the gospel, and it all began over the phone… in Jr. High.