Goonies Stand By Me in The 'Burbs

Sara, Ronda and my dad

Do you ever act on a whim and do something crazy - but at the time it seems totally practical? And maybe not at all stalkerish? And you are only in 9th grade and you don't tell any sort of adult figures what you're doing?

Uhh... yeah... 'cause Sara and I totally did that!

Maybe we should do a little introduction first for those of you not around since grade school! Sara and I are both only children. People have always thought we are sisters, if not twins. Her parents are like my second set of parents, and Katura's honorary grandparents. We were both band geeks together. We had our share of fights, but those are completely diminished by all the years of complete silliness and laughter we have had. Seriously, get us together and it won't take long and we will be crying from laughing so hard and we won't be able to speak. For a while we were pretty much attached at the hip! All of my funniest memories from life before college are with Sara! She is a poop that lives in Oklahoma now... but her parents and I will continue to hope some day she will be closer to us again!

Now let's get to today's junior high story filled with complete logic and sane, rational thinking.

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It was a beautiful sunny day. We were together at my house and clearly had too much time. Obviously we weren't busy with New Kids on the Block, Hangin' Tough, and arguing over who is the cute one (JOE!), and we weren't obsessing over Rocky Horror Picture Show... so what else would we do?

What would we do? We'd set off on a crazy adventure that I would freak out about if I was a mom and heard my daughter and her friend mimicked!

Sara - rocking a scrunchie on the ankle look

Sara had a boyfriend (whose name I am omitting). Cute, shy, slightly mysterious.. and Sara figured out where he lived. Since this was way before GPS and internet, we didn't exactly set off with maps or knowledge of how long this would be. I asked Shawn last night about how far he thought it was to the place Sara and I ended up at. He guestimated about 10 miles. And I was dying of laughter. Google confirmed that today. That was 10 miles ONE WAY!! Sara and I hopped on our good ol' mountain bikes (because that's what we called our bicycles back in the day) and decided to ride all the way to the middle of Melrose area to find her boyfriend's house.

For those of you not from here, Melrose is basically just land. Houses here and there. Farms. Hills. Trees. It isn't town at all. We didn't care. We were so jolly, laughing the whole way, virtually guessing which turns to take. I mean we couldn't even drive cars, and we didn't really know how to get where we were going. I guess we just used our woman's intuition! At one point we got to a T in the road. Do we go left? Do we go right?

I THINK we went right. I know in the end right was the right way to go, and eventually we were at his address. Two blond girls on their bikes, standing at a driveway, giggling, convincing themselves they could randomly appear at this farm land and not seem weird. I mean we were totally a surprise. As far as he knew, she didn't have any idea where he lived. I recall she found it on a card in the counselors office or something at Fremont. Oh no, we weren't stalkerish at all. Nope!

All this land. And no house. What? Yeah, but there was a small trailer. Not a mobile home. I mean in my head, 20+ years later anyway, it was like something you'd pull behind your truck to go camping with. Maybe it was bigger than that, but that's how I see it now. There were rabbits everywhere. And there he was. In his camper. With his parents. And it was soooo soooo awkward. I mean the amount of "o" I put in the double "so" there shows just how awkward it was.

He was uncomfortable. His parents were confused and awkward. We all just sat there almost in silence staring at each other. Remember in The 'Burbs how the new neighbors were totally strange and awkward? That was totally what this was! Sara and I were Tom Hanks and his buddies showing up uninvited and they were the creepy residents that clearly wanted us gone!

9th grade Ronda hanging out at Fremont

I have no idea how long we were there. It couldn't have been all that long. And I'm sure we peppy girls were trying really hard to seem normal and crack jokes, as hard as it was. But finally we were leaving. And laughing our asses off about how weird it all was. We did feel a little bad because he seemed maybe a little embarrassed. I don't think we judged at all - we just couldn't get over the strange vibe and the fact that we rode about 10 miles on our bikes to see him and told nobody what we were doing!

As we rode back toward town the sky started to get darker. I mean this was about to be a 20+ mile bike ride when you add in our return trip home. And we didn't bring water. We didn't have cell phones (because nobody did!). We had a very small amount of cash on us. And that went away when we got to the Melrose Store. We were so exhausted and it was getting dark. We ended up using a payphone to call my dad to come get us with his pickup truck. And with the rest of our money? We bought a box of old fashioned donuts and sat, eating them and laughing ... and we are STILL laughing about it!

Stand By Me. Goonies. Both Oregon movies. Maybe this isn't so strange? Maybe younger kids in Oregon always set off on their own adventures without telling anybody!?