Loved this! So, so True!

Re intelligence, as my mother always used to say, if you have to tell people how smart you are, you're not. I'll just let that speak for itself.

High school friends, ugggg! I grew up in the same type of town as you describe, get out or get stuck. What you wrote reminded me of a guy, we'll call him Howie. He was cool in 1984 when he was 18 and I was 13. He was good looking and had weed and hung around the mall talking to little girls like me. You know what's not cool, fast forwarding the clock 35 years, he's still at the mall, wearing a trucker hat to cover his baldness, still smoking weed (okay that's not a biggie), at the same mall talking to little girls. I ran into once, at court, he was an accused, I was duty counsel for the day. It was weird, mostly because he seriously still thought everything was exactly the same as 1984.

I'll leave it at that because I could seriously go on all day. :)