Memories can live on in photos, in our minds, and in touchstones that provide a physical connection to people and places. That last one is what five friends from Lake Highlands High School will take with them when they scatter to colleges and work in the fall.
Julia Edwards, Kaylee Lykins, Ellee Irvy, Miller McDonald, and Emily Mabry are best friends who all graduated last week. On Monday they were at Wildlike, a piercing studio in Dallas' Oak Lawn neighborhood, to get that touchstone reminder of their friendship bonds; ear piercings.
'I think piercing is such a rite of passage," Wildlike owner Alysa Teichman said. "I think graduation is obviously one of the main rites of passage, and I think it's so fun to be able to do it with your best friends."
"I think it's almost like a sisterhood for us," Lykins said. "You can tell them anything, rely on them, and you have someone to do something with, and so you're never lonely."
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The friends all got ear piercings together so that when they go off to work jobs and go college at the University of Arkansas, Providence, and Texas Tech, they will have a physical reminder of their sisterhood bonds.
'If we go more than a day of not seeing each other, we're like, what are we doing," Miller McDonald said. "I feel like we're close enough to where, like, no amount of time of not seeing each other; we'd come back and it would be the same as it was like these past four years."
"I just think there's a lot of noise in the world and a lot happening, and there's just really nothing to me quite like female friendships," Teichman said. "I honestly hope that they can stay in touch and be lifelong friends like I am with my best friends from high school."
