Close friends

The Christian Science Monitor

Do you hang out with a certain group of friends? If you do, you probably spend a lot of time together—at school, after school, and talking on the phone! There are things you laugh about that only you and your best friends understand. You probably dress a lot alike. Talk alike. Agree about most everything.

What do you do when the people you've spent so much time with, the people you have more fun with than anyone else, do things that you are sure just can't be too smart? I was in a store with my best friends—guys I'd known for years—and they stole these earrings to give to some girls. My stomach felt pretty weak when they showed the earrings to me. I knew that in the eyes of the police just being with these guys when they were stealing made me guilty too. And somehow I felt that if I went along with them this time, I'd get used to feeling guilty and wouldn't care at all about honesty anymore. I started feeling pretty bad about this.

These were the guys I spent almost all of my spare time with—my parents even told me that I spent too much time with them! We helped each other do things, we played sports together, we joked and laughed with each other all the time. What would I do every day without them? Now, all of a sudden things were different. They just didn't understand how I felt about being honest.

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