20 Years. Weird. Good.

Does anyone else out there have their 18 year old self nestled deep down someplace inside?  And does that 18 year old self occasionally make an appearance?  Mine sure does from time to time.  (I use her to explain my attachment to the Twilight series despite its silliness...) Well, she showed up loud and proud last weekend as I attended my 20 year high school reunion.  And you know what?  I love her.  I think I spent a long time feeling like I had been a complete dork.  Okay, in some ways I was. And...still am really. Oh, there are things I would change; I know I would have fared better had I grown out my curls before college and perhaps limited the number of hats I wore to school. But I didn't, so that's that, and looking back, I have to say that I have come to love my little inner highschooler.  She did her best and went through some tough stuff and had some great experiences and friendships.  So for the reunion I just let her show up and patted her head, said good job and then put her back in her closet at the end of the night.  She manifested herself by being extremely anxious before the reunion, especially walking out to the lawn where everyone was mingling. Of course once I got there and saw a few familiar faces it was great.  And there were several people that I was just overjoyed to see.  It was lovely, if not quite as monumental a milestone as I had imagined that it might be.  There were a couple of unsettling moments for me; a slideshow with several pictures of me from highschool I've never seen before. (Again, should have grown out the hair...) Also a book, a copy of which was on every table, may no one have looked at my page, that was the collection of surveys written by our class that included such horrifying questions as, "Who would you like to marry," "Who was the love of your senior year," "What will you be wearing in 20 years," and "What was your best date of highschool?" These questions could have been possibly less embarassing to reread had I not been seized with an apparant fit of silliness and wild abandon when I answered them.  I must remember to warn my own children to be cautious about any time capusel-type questionaires because somehow or another, time does actually pass, and someday you'll be faced with  those answers, possibly in public.  Ah, well.  Like I said, I just had to pat my little self on the head, send her a love message and put her back to bed. 

I've been blessed by many many friends through my life and any chance to celebrate that and reconnect is such a pleasure.