A toast to Jenny

For those of you that never knew Jenny Cornett, boy did you miss out! Jenny was one of my very best friends growing up but unfortunately God had other plans for her when He took her away from us on August 10, 2003. Today would have been her 30th birthday so just like I did for my 29th birthday, I'm going to list 30 things about Jenny and if you're lucky some funny stories and memories.

1) Everybody loved Jenny, especially my family! I was always either at her house or she was always at mine. If Jenny wasn't around, my Mom or Granny would always say "Where's Jenny?", "Where's Jenny?" I often wondered if my family loved Jenny more than me....haha.

2) Jenny always came to my house after school. One day I had detention. (Side note: This was the only time that I ever had detention. Do you wanna know why I had detention?? Because I was tapping my ruler on my desk in art class. Ridiculous, I know but so was Mr. Hurd.) Anyway, Mom said that day Jenny came to my house, walked in the door and said "Hi Mom, I'm home. Shari's in detention!" Gotta love her!

Me, Jenny, Mom and Chase...our dog.

3) All the fun porch parties at her house.

4) Walking to Speedway from her house to get a snack.

5) Watching her get so aggravated over her mom's boyfriend....now husband.

6) Sitting in her living room and stuffing newspapers in plastic bags for her mom's boyfriend's paper route.

7) I went on the paper route with Jenny and her mom (Merm) one time and one time only. All the stopping to put papers in mailboxes made me a little sick. So we were finally going down route 23 and I stuck my head out the window and puked all down the side of the car! THAT'S why I never went on another paper route with them again!

8) I think of her every time I hear the song Linger....inside joke.

She wasn't happy that I was beating her....haha.

9) We would always go to Wilma's restaurant for lunch. Every time she would order a sandwich with onions, her breath smelled like onions for the rest of the day!

10) 3 words: Our Central boys

11) She was a bit of a matchmaker....and a referee. All the guys thought she was so cool and such a good friend too. They would always open up to her about us crazy girls. She would act as the go-between person anytime we were wanting to date someone, or in fight with our boyfriend, or we were trying to break-up with our boyfriend.

12) Anytime my parents said I couldn't do something or go somewhere, all I had to say is "Jenny's going" and I could go. :)

13) The trip to Gatlinburg my parents took us on.

14) She loved Wheat Thins!

Britt and Jenny at cheerleading camp. You may not be able to see but she actually has Wheat Thins in her hand.

15) That super cool dance move she taught us. We would always do it the dances and thought we were so cool!

16) Hearing Merm (her mom) yell "Jennifer Lynn!" anytime she would get in trouble.

17) She was one tough cookie! She could pin you down and you could forget about getting up unless she let you up. I remember her wrestling a couple of guys in her living room....and winning.

18) Her house seemed to be the place to sneak out of and meet up with boys. I won't mention any names. Ahem!....Angela.

19) She always had perfect hair. Perfect bangs. Perfect ponytail. Nowadays, I don't even "fix" my ponytail. Actually, I don't even look at it. My oh my, have things changed since the 90s.

20) Who can forget that UK bedroom she had where her and Merm put the UK wallpaper up themselves. Parts of it had a hard time staying up.

21) She was one of the first of our friends to get her driver's license. We used to drive around in Merm's T-bird...the one I puked down the side of.

22) I don't know whose bright idea it was to get Christmas pictures made together but we did. I think we were in middle school and I think we had them made at K-Mart. Me, Jenny, Brittany Porter, and Amanda Lauffer. And yes, we were all wearing Christmas shirts. I have the picture but I'm not brave enough to post it on here. Sorry.

23) It was so much fun to have her spotting you in a toe touch. She'd grab you by the waist and as I mentioned earlier, she's a brute! She could lift you up so high and your toe touches were always awesome.

On our way to a cheerleading competition. Ronald was pretty much begging for some action.

24) She loved the movie Boyz in the Hood.

25) One time we got the bright (and illegal) idea to steal street signs. Kids: Don't try this at home. We pulled them out of the ground and carried them through (ironically) a church parking lot to Amanda Lauffer's house. She was carrying one end and I was on the other. The sight of us carrying those big signs had to have been hi-larious. We were laughing so hard, we literally peed on ourselves.

26) She loved country music but we still had some of our all-time favorites that we would jam to, like Knockin' Da Boots, Short Short Man, oh and we can't forget a little bit of Too Short.

27) She was definitely no slacker! She went to Morehead and graduated in 3 or 3 1/2 years.....while working!

28) The last time I talked to her was around Christmas time. She was at her dad's in TN and she said she was coming back home around New Years. We said we needed to get together, maybe we could meet up on her way home from her dad's. Well, neither of us called each other and once again, we took it for granted.

29) For the last 7 years, I've had dreams about her almost every month. In every dream, she's still here with us and I realize I have a second chance to not take her for granted and make up for the time that we didn't stay in touch as much as we should have after she moved to Morehead our senior year of high school. Every dream is exactly the same, just a different place.

30) About a year and half after she died, my Granny passed away. I can't tell you how much my Granny thought the world of her. We were at the funeral home, saying bye to Granny one last time before they took her to the church for the service. I decided to go to bathroom before we went so I walked down the hallway to the bathroom and noticed a random flower arrangement on the floor by the door. I didn't know what it was doing there so I looked at the card and it said "In loving memory of Jenny Cornett." Well that just did me in! It meant so much to me that she was there on such a difficult day and how crazy is it that I was the one that found it.....on the floor.....by itself......while going to the bathroom. I guess she just wanted to make sure that I knew she was there.

Happy 30th Birthday Jenny! I wish you were here today so we could celebrate.