I believe

As essential as oxygen is to life, I believe friends are a must in order to live life to the fullest. Without friends life is boring, and if life is boring how is it life? How many nights are you away from your house? What are you doing? Are you at a practice? Or are you at a school activity? That usually happens to me Monday through Thursday nights. But weekends are when I’m hanging out with my friends and there’s nothing the world can throw at me to stop it from happening. Weekends are known as my friend nights, along with other breaks from school or extended weekends. That time belongs to my friends and I to hanging out and having fun. There have been lots of research studies done about the effects of friends. In my opinion it’s kind of obvious what the effects are. People with friends are 100 times more likely to live a happy, healthy life with a husband or wife, children and a good job. In fact one study shows that people who look at friends as a must in life and not as a “don’t really need them” sort of thing live longer lives. Another study shows people without friends usual are more likely to be sick or depressed. Then for some people that depression turns into angry. Which then somehow twists their mind so they become a psychopath, which leads them to go on a killing rampage. At their trial their lawyer says not guilty by reason of insanity and the jury agrees with him. They end up putting them in a mental hospital in one of those special rooms for special people. The room is all white including the floor. They have to wear the straight jacket, so they have to be hand fed for the rest of their life. So people make friends, it saves lives. It doesn’t matter how many friends you have, you just need one to get started. Then that friend will introduce you to their friends and so on and so forth. Every day you have a chance to make friends, but you also have the chance of losing them. Think about how many friends have you lost? How did you lose them? Did they move away or were you the one who moved? Did you transfer to a different school or did they? Where they a friend you made from being part of a team and one year they didn’t play or you didn’t play? Were you friends at work and one of you switched shifts? Did you have a big fight and you never really got over it? Did you forget about them after having a long summer break without seeing them? Or did you simply just grow apart? I just named about twelve ways to lose a friend. I know there’s a really obvious way, but hopefully this hasn’t happen to you; they died……obviously you can’t be dead otherwise you won’t be listening to this speech. Or maybe you are and you just think its fun to listen to high school speeches in your after life or where ever we go after we die. Getting back on topic, there are millions of ways to make or lose a friend. Now a lot of you are probably thinking that I missed one of the newer ways to make a friend. Go online on Facebook or Twitter or some other social network. You can make friends online. How much do they know about you? Yes a few of your friends online may be people you know in real life, but some are people you’ve never met. In other words they could say whatever they want and you wouldn’t be the wiser. So they could say they’re a girl when they are really a guy or that they’re 15 years old when they really 42. I believe sites like Facebook and Twitter were made to keep in touch with old friends who have moved away from you or you moved away from them, or just people you don’t see very often anymore. I believe in a statement I learned when I was really little and still in Girl Scouts, “Make new friends but keep the old; one is silver and the others gold.” I have an Aunt who lives in Thailand, so I am friends with her on Facebook. We keep in touch that way, along with all the other family members that live outside of Wisconsin. Studies have shown that it’s harder to make friends the older you get, so start now. Some of you may be freaking out that you don’t have a lot of friends in high school. Don’t worry about it!!! One friend from high school will stay with you through the rest of your life, so it really doesn’t matter how many you have as long as you’re happy. So practice, be ready and most importantly be friendly. You never know when that special person or friend is going to come along.