While on Facebook this evening, I got an e-mail from an old high school friend, Jessica. It was a simple, one-line message that said "Shelly, I remember writing some wickedly funny notes with you." As I started to recall our note-passing, I remembered the goofiness that Jessica brought out in me. I also remembered another high school friend, Ashley, with whom I felt free to act very goofy. It was these two girls that brought out a creative side to me that I had forgotten was there. Or at the very least I had hushed so as not to disturb the adult I am supposed to be. Jessica and Ashley represented an artistic, creative, bohemian life that I associated with New York City. If I was to become an artist, I would live in New York and I would hang around people like Jessica and Ashley.
As I was responding to Jessica's e-mail, I noticed that another high school friend named Karyn was on Facebook. Still in a nostalgic mindset, I thought about the Karyn I knew in school and who I was when I was around her. Karyn was a very pretty girl. She wore more, and knew more about, makeup than any girl I can recall from that time. She was glamorous to me and had an air of adulthood that I looked forward to having myself. She was the physical manifestation of what I pictured my twenties to be. She embodied youth and excitement and boys; that time before marriage and motherhood gets you and turns you into a mom-jean wearing, casserole-cooking schlump that Erma Bombeck wrote about. I couldn't wait to be in my twenties so that I could be made up and glamorous like Karyn.
Of course, there are other people from high school that I remember fondly and others not so fondly. But I realized the wide variety of people we meet in our lives and how easily we miss the attributes of each person. The people we connect with are like bits of our personality scattered throughout the world. Some we only connect with briefly and others extensively. But the vast majority of those people really do enhance our lives or contribute in some way to our existence.
I know, I know, I don't normally get this deep or this nostalgic in my blog entries. But Jessica's one-line e-mail really did show me how much of an impact people have had on me.
And it was very nice to feel like I was in tenth grade Geometry again passing notes to Jessica and making up goof-ball things to amuse the two of us.
As I was responding to Jessica's e-mail, I noticed that another high school friend named Karyn was on Facebook. Still in a nostalgic mindset, I thought about the Karyn I knew in school and who I was when I was around her. Karyn was a very pretty girl. She wore more, and knew more about, makeup than any girl I can recall from that time. She was glamorous to me and had an air of adulthood that I looked forward to having myself. She was the physical manifestation of what I pictured my twenties to be. She embodied youth and excitement and boys; that time before marriage and motherhood gets you and turns you into a mom-jean wearing, casserole-cooking schlump that Erma Bombeck wrote about. I couldn't wait to be in my twenties so that I could be made up and glamorous like Karyn.
Of course, there are other people from high school that I remember fondly and others not so fondly. But I realized the wide variety of people we meet in our lives and how easily we miss the attributes of each person. The people we connect with are like bits of our personality scattered throughout the world. Some we only connect with briefly and others extensively. But the vast majority of those people really do enhance our lives or contribute in some way to our existence.
I know, I know, I don't normally get this deep or this nostalgic in my blog entries. But Jessica's one-line e-mail really did show me how much of an impact people have had on me.
And it was very nice to feel like I was in tenth grade Geometry again passing notes to Jessica and making up goof-ball things to amuse the two of us.
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