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Laws of Life Essay, Amber Yerkes

Maxim: "If you lie with dogs you'll get fleas" ~Virgina Yerkes

Character Trait: Informative

Friends Can Change You

As a child my grandmother had this saying, "If you lie with dogs you'll get fleas." I never really understood what she meant by that, until my freshman year in high school. Like every other freshman I was a little scared and nervous about my new school, so I made friends with the first people I met there. They had seemed pretty nice to me, but when my parents met them they didn't quite agree.

My new friends were kind of crazy and out of control and they were all into drugs and drinking. They didn't care about what anyone thought of them and got into a lot of trouble. I was never that kind of person until I started hanging out with them. I became pretty much exactly like them, except for the fact that I still refused to do drugs. I did however start to drink a lot. During this time I started feeling as if drinking was the only way I could be happy because I could do just about anything when I was drinking. My friends thought I was really funny when I was intoxicated and they gave me lots of attention. I think the attention was the main reason for my drinking. I felt like everyone liked me better when I had a few drinks in me, so I continued to drink everyday for six months. I even went to school drunk a few times. I tried my best to hide it, but my friends that I had from before high school could tell that something was wrong with me. My parents could tell more than anyone, because my grades were slipping, I would get mad over nothing and yell at everyone, and I didn't care about anything. During this time I started feeling depressed and every time I started feeling sad I would reach for another bottle. I became so desperate for alcohol that I started stealing it from my parents and my friend's parents.

By this time the first semester of school was over and Christmas break was just starting. My parents wouldn't let me hang out or even talk with my friends. It made me so mad that all I could think about was leaving. I always go to my grandma's house in New Jersey during winter break. So of course my parents told my grandmother about everything that was going on, and the first thing she said to me was, "If you lie with dogs you'll get fleas." I asked her what her point was. She told me that I wasn't being my normal happy self and that my friends were the reason for this unhappiness. She said she couldn't even recognize me when I had got off the plane. As my grandmother told me this my eyes began to water because I knew she was right. I remember feeling ashamed, like I had let her down and I never wanted to have that feeling again.

That day I realized how much I had changed and it scared me. That night I took a good look in the mirror and I didn't like what I saw. I decided that night would be the last night that I would drink any type of alcohol. I now realize what my grandma had been telling me for so many years and that is if you hang out with people that do things that aren't right then you're going to do things that aren't right. I went back to school when the break was over and I joined my schools JROTC program. After my first day in the program I left my friends and never hung out with them ever again. I became active in a church and I've learned so much about the greatest person ever, God! Knowing everything that I know now makes me realize that the life I was living before wasn't the one I should have been living. I've been sober for two years and happy as can be.

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