Two ideas, one gossipy, one telling

have two stories, sorry for the lateness.

The first speaks to the interconnectedness of the suburbs in Davis. I guess the moral could be "Everyone knows each other, everyone's sleeping with each other and everyone's in therapy"

My best friend since second grade was having a really hard time in highschool and would later on in college, dealing with various problems that she wouldn't get to the bottom of until later. In highschool though, her mom sent her to a shrink that she would talk to once a week. I ended up learning who this shrink (her name I think was Eileen) was because she was connected to my mom. My mom is in AA, and her AA sponsor knew Eileen, because the sponsor's husband had divorced her to be with Eileen. I found this out because my mom and I were cruising through garage sales and we saw the Ex husband and Eileen running one of their own. We stopped and looked through some stuff, (my mom was maintaining safe, non-ex wife related conversation) and I found a black pea coat and a green scarf. About a year later, I was hanging out with my best friend while she still lived in Santa Barbara and she was boredly looking through my closet. She found the pea coat and asked if she could borrow it.
So for about another year, my best friend was walking around, wearing her own former therapist's pea coat, and the pea coat of the woman who broke up my mother's AA sponsor's marriage, without knowing. I didn't tell her until a few months ago because I didn't want her to know that I knew who her therapist was. Turns out she really didn't care, she thought the whole thing was a riot.
Also, epilogue. My mom's NA sponsor might be this therapist's therapist.

This one is more about the hierarchy of the suburban community.
Our neighbor BK had divorced from her husband and was left to take care of three rowdy boys. The oldest was August, who despite being occasionally rough around the edges, (think a young Eminem), was a good kid who loved the outdoors and skateboarding. This was a little after the Columbine shootings occured and August was in highschool. It was after school and August was stopped by a school officer who saw that he had a knife hanging from his belt. Technically they weren't on school property at the time, but August cooperated with the officer and gave him the knife. It was a fishing knife, and his dad had given it to him. The officer later said that August was cooperative and respectful, but it was at the height of the whole zero tolerance fiasco, where kids who brought GI Joe guns to school were being suspended, so August had a lot coming to him, (even though it wasn't during school hours or on school property). They had a hearing where they called in his mom and reiterated every incident August was involved in, in addition to the current offense. His mom didn't have much money or power in the community. He was expelled from the district and had to go live with his dad out of state so he could go to school.

Then in my senior year of highschool, this kid Adam Liston got busted when authorities found a loaded rifle in the back of his truck while it was parked in the student parking lot, during second period. Unlike August, Adam's mom was the head of the PTA. When the school tried to expel him, she got the whole PTA against them. Adam was good at sports and popular amongst a lot of the football players, so they started their own campaign to keep Adam in school. Some of my friends started a campaign to keep him out and make the rules apply to everyone, but in the end, Adam was let back into school. He went to a good college but I don't remember which. The moral of the story:
If your parents are wealthy/still married/prominent in the community, it's okay to bring a loaded weapon to school. Have a blast!