My parents always said “show me your friends, and I will show you your future.” It was a pretty powerful statement in my mind.
I truly believe that that statement kept me from making many wrong choices when it came to picking friends.
I am so thankful that I have never had a friend that lead me down the wrong path. Although I did not have any bad friends, I did have many crazy friends in my childhood. I have to admit that some of them were quite odd. I had one friend who had a strange phobia of not having the air conditioning on in her room. If she did not have the air conditioning on, she would stat having a panic attack. She kept the air conditioner on 24/7, year round. We lived way up north, so most of the year was not warm enough to even need to use an air conditioner. She did not care though. She never turned her air conditioner off, and her siblings knew how much she could not stand sleeping without air conditioning. They would sneak in her room at night and turn off the air conditioner. It was truly a very unkind thing to do, but somehow, she lived through it. I can remember countless nights sleeping over her house and freezing all night long. I always brought extra blankets, but it was still so cold in her room that it was hard to sleep. My family ended up moving, and we lost contact with that precious friend of mine. I wonder if she still has to sleep with air conditioning some twenty-five years later.