Hillary Jones

It was an August afternoon in 1997 on the playground at Shannon Elementary. My friends and I were in a wad making up dance moves to the new Spice Girls song when Mrs Keith, a 4th grade teacher, came over and directed our attention to the new blonde-headed kid in her class that was standing on the sidewalk. Mrs. Keith said that this Hillary kid had just moved to Shannon from Tupelo and that it would be nice if we introduced ourselves. I remember thinking, "why not?" We were forming a Spice Girl performance for the talent show and she did resemble Baby Spice, so I thought that it would be perfect. Our efforts did not work, though, because Hillary was a jerk face and said that she did not want to talk to us. Whatever. She eventually stopped pouting about her move to Shannon and agreed to be Baby Spice in the talent show. The rest is history.

We have spent a lot of time together, be it shooting turtles with a BB gun in her families pond or at sleepovers on Cherry Street. By the way, never ever feed Hillary cheese cubes. It leads to a long night. :)

Some of my greatest adventures in life have involved Hillary and Brewer Baptist Church. I'm pretty sure that we've gone from singing Father Abraham in Mrs. Kathryn's children's choir to playing I've Never every chance we could get. "I've never had blonde hair" got the Jones's every time. As a matter of fact, the youth group years were some of my favorite of the past 24 years. It's unbelievable how much time we all spent together. I don't think that there was a Sunday night that went by that were weren't at the Wendy's on South Gloster having pickle races down the windows.

We ate a lot of weird stuff back then and jumped off a lot of crazy stuff, so it's amazing that we're still alive. We had fun, though. Hillary really has been there though a lot of important times in my life and me in hers. That's why I want her up there by me on the Big Day. We share a lot of inside stories so it would just be weird if when we're old and gray, I couldn't say, "Little Hill, remember what happened on July 14, 2012." She'll be at the bar with a lot of makeup on.

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