When you live in Western Indiana, there isn’t much to do, unless you like to sit around and get trashed. I just graduted from High school, and I still act like I’m 15. This weekend, I realized that I just wasn’t living.
Friday and Saturday night I hung out with some old friends that I used to be incredibly tight with. Greg was his name, had just bought a new Dodge pick up. It was really nice. Rex, my other guy friend, has a real fast supped up Honda, kinda of like on The Fast and the Furious. My best friend Jen has a Mitsubishi Eclipse. I have a Grand Prix. We decided we need to go race the mean streets of the closest town, which is in Illinois. Well, race we did. And got in trouble by the cops, we did. Only my friend Greg got stopped, but no one got ticketed. Well we stopped, and Greg and Rex got in the same vehicle and Jen and I did the same. We drove up and down the streets, and I was flashing people. It was great fun. Then we went to Royal Donut, Wal-Mart, and all these places in the county that are supposedly haunted. We did this the next night too. I mean, what more fun is there than driving around your cars, flashing people, and going into random places at 4 am? It’s also fun to watch your best firend nearly wet herself when you scare her at a place called the “13 sided church.” I also scared Greg when he told me not to scream, I did. He spilled hot coffee in his lap. Thats how good of a friend I am.
When I got home, I realized what an incredibly fun weekend I had had, and that I just wasn’t living cause I wasn’ t having fun. I also realized that sometimes your true friends are the ones that you forgot about and left behind. Innocent fun at that. No drugs, no alcohol. Just good ole’ flat out horsing around. Hey, theres not much to in the cornfield capital of the USA, especially in small towns.
The next two days, my best friend came up and visited me. Oh the fun we had, watching infomercials all night long, then playing Chutes and Ladders at 7:30am. We also had fun wearing Pooh and Tigger costumes in the local grocery store.
Oh what fun it is to be a teenager growing up in Indiana.
I can’t say I share those sentiments, but I suppose it could be worse. At least I’m some sex-crazed, horny bastard.
Um, disregard that last part. 
Count your blessings. You don’t have to worry about gangs, drive-by shootings, crackheads that kill for pocket-change. Sometimes the best things in life are those things we take for granted. There will come a time in your life when you will look back and wish for the good ole days, that just don’t seem that good right now. I live in a small town in North Carolina. The streets roll up at 9:00. Except for a couple of fast food places that stay open to 10 or 11. We don’t really worry about locking our doors at night, but we do, not because of the people that live here but because of people passing through. Ninety-five percent of the crime is commited by people who are not members of the community.
This is where I live, but even as boring and backwards as it sounds, it has changed tremendously since I was small. We actually used to sleep with the doors and windows open, didn’t have to worry about where we played cause no one would harm us. My parents didn’t worry about leaving the keys in the car, or leaving the car running while they went into a store to just make a quick purchase.
Cherish your town, the day of small towns and boring days will end soon enough.
Former Hoosier teen here. Now I’m an all-grown-up Hoosier.
I can relate. I graduated with 34 other students, and I’d known almost all of them since first grade. Boy! After about 10 years, you just realize you know WAY too much about the kid behind you in English, don’t you?
I don’t know how big your town is; mine was about 2000, I think. For fun, we drove around town. And around, and around, because it takes all of maybe three minutes to completely cover all four square blocks of it. We’d grab some fries at the (one) drive-in restaurant and sit in the lot and get drunk, then go drive around some more.
Hang in there. I know it gets boring, but I’ve talked to a lot of people who attended schools thatwere so big they didn’t know ANYone, and I’ve come to believe there are worse fates than a small twon or small school.
Do well in school, go to I.U. Bloomington, and enjoy. It’s a haven of diversity and enlightenment compared to where you are now, guaranteed.
And then, when you go home for the weekends (even when you are 36 years old) people in the grocery store will STILL recognize you, and ask you how your mom is. 
(Imagine, I didn’t even have the Internet when I was your age! Eeeek! What a nightmare!)
Regards,
karol