Me as the teenager, ergo "my sweet sixteen" contest by @papi.mati

My teenage years were great. Sure, I had some problems, I have made some mistakes, but the memories which remained from that time are mostly very positive and whenever I am thinking about that era, I am remembering wonderful friends who were next to me all the time. I will try to write about that time few words, hoping it will be interesting for y'all

I had great friends

I'm from a small town, so each day I was taking the bus to the high school in another city. I remember those times as full of friends: I had a group of my friends from my town, another who was driving the bus with me, finally the closest group from my class. All of them were very creative, opened and supportive.

In fact, it was a big change. Before high school, I was rather quite closed and definitely not popular as a kid. Then I had the opportunity to change the environment and start from the beginning and it worked out quite well. Besides some smaller friendships, my squad was made of:

• Klod: the best of the best friends. She was the closest person to me. We were so close that I was staying at night in her house (I'm gay, so it wasn't anything inappropriate), in December I was pretending Santa Clause and visiting her younger brother with the gifts, I knew well her parents and she knew mine. We were always together.
  Right now I still have some contact with her, but as we live on other continents, the contact is limited. She is much more serious than when she was a teenager (believe me, it's not obvious - some of my friends never grew up), she works as an accountant and plans to move to Italy someday

• Bolek: very extravert Madonna lover, always crazy in a good meaning of that word. Usually, he was initiating some funny activities, like going to McDonald's to ask if they will let us make there 18th birthday or making supermarket ride in the trolleys. We were also making plenty of silly phone pranks, like calling our teacher and informing her that the tractor she ordered is on the way. If you think it is quite ridiculous, you are right - we were kids though.
  I remember he introduced me once to his female friend, with the nickname "Llama", because she wanted to practice kissing the guys. She came with the friend and they were learning how to kiss on me while I was waiting for the bus at the bus stop. Old ladies around were shocked.
  I don't have any contact with him anymore.

• Piotrek: The brain of the team. The smartest guy, not he speaks four languages, including Arabic (believe me, not an easy thing to learn for Slavic people. I know, I tried and failed quite soon). Besides being the brainiac, he was also one of two of my best friends to sneak out to the pub and drink a beer or two

• Michał: the second guy who was drinking with us. My ways with him separated much before we left the high school. Unfortunately, his beliefs were very different from mine. He joined some nationalists groups and started to be very anti-immigrant, homophobic, and aggressive to everyone who is different than him.

• Pysia: Big Mama - that's one in the team who was always asking if you have the second breakfast with you and telling you to wear the jacket otherwise you will get cold. I loved her very much.

• Martyna: noisy and funny, but also ready to fight with everyone who would want to say the bad word about us all. Our female warrior, now the lawyer. I guess that career fits her very well.

• Kamil: Artistic soul. Actor in the school theatres then and TV actor now. That was my very first boyfriend

• Karolina: In fact, she was more like a friend of Kamil and she joined our team a bit later. A very serious one, always well prepared for the lessons, always very honest, even when it could be painful. I respected it a lot.

_{with friends during some school trip}

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_{As the humanists, we also had some good relations with the artistic class (our artist friends on the photo). We really didn't like each other with the sport class though. I guess it fits the stereotypes of humanists, isn't it?}

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I was very creative but lazy

As a student, I was quite average. I was good at everything humanist-related: literature, orthography, I also liked geography and chemistry, but on another side, I was really, really bad at physics. Now I'm married to the physicist, so let's call it Karma ;)

I used to do a lot of creative things at that time: I have created an internet forum, where we were chatting with some friends about different things and making meetings to go out together to the cinema or make the walking trips, I was making some events, like karaoke, my own parties, sometimes some silly stuff like "bring a toy to the school" event, but above all, I loved acting.

I played like tens of the acts. We have made three theatres for the kids from the orphanages in the city (each year one), I also made one act for the schools, it was the "Tango" drama of Stanislaw Mrozek. Entry was paid and all the income from the tickets we have spent on repainting the classes at school.

After school, I was going to some theatre group where we were preparing a Jewish musical. I enjoyed it a lot, not only because it was fun, but also because one boy who was the actor there was super in my type and I had a crush on him. Unfortunately, I had to quit after few months, because of the issue with the transport.

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_{For the women's day, all boys have made the photos for the girls and gifted it with some sweets and "can't touch this" music on the CD. Again: silly, but we were very young. I'm the one with the banana.}

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I was very close with my family

You know how it is - most teenagers are ashamed of their parents and are quite difficult to live with for the time when they grow up. I wasn't one of them.
Okay, maybe I had some fights with my father, but it's because he was hurting our family in some way. I was writing about it some time ago. My relationship with my brother, mother, aunts, grandparents, and cousins was great.

I have to admit that, like every teenager, I have made some mistakes though. I started to smoke cigarettes when I was 15. I am trying to quit since then (even now I am in the middle of quitting number 1000), I drunk alcohol from time to time - in fact as a teenager much more often than now (I'm drinking maybe twice per year now, never get drunk). So even if I was not fighting with my family about some goofy stuff, they may have had some worries related to my behavior.

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_{My aunt and cousin which is 18 now... Time goes fast}

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I was young

I looked better and was skinny, no matter how much pizza I ate (now I wake up with an extra 5 kg after one slice of pizza in the evening). I would give a lot for that metabolism of the youngster.

I was always smiled, even though there were some very shady things in my life at that time as well -- I was experiencing my sexuality and at the very same time first homophobia (blackmailing, violence). I think I managed to live with that thanks to the supporting people around me. Even though I was always keeping that bad experiences for me, I had the place the people, where I could escape to.

Finally, I was more blonde than now. Can the hair get darker with the age? Does it mean that in another 15 years I'll have black hair on my head? :D

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All the photos included in the post belong to me.
Thank you for reading,
@papi.mati

CC:
@fabio2614

Invitation goes to:
@willeusz
@geos90
@isaacellias