Time as the great equalizer.

Posted on October 10, 2008

I know I may be one of the few, but I loved High School.  Sure, I went through all the normal teenage angst.  My parents didn’t understand me, I was the only one in the world who felt that way, yadda yadda yadda.  Even with all the typical turmoil, I loved my high school experience.

See, in my high school, social groups were fluid.  I had my core “group,” but within that group we had many subsets.  Plus, I was a total theater geek.  Which in most high school means that I would qualify as a social outcast.  But, in my high school, theater was THE thing to do.  We had jocks, cheerleaders, druggies, techies, musicians, dancers, and hangers on (me).  Cast parties where the hottest ticket in town, and since I drove a minivan, I was VERY used popular.

I did live in a bubble though.  I knew the people I knew, and I didn’t really try to get to know anyone else.  I was AMAZED when I went to my ten year high school reunion, and all these people knew who I was.  The kids I would have classified as “popular” or whatever came up to me asking how I was doing and what was going on in my life.  People I don’t actually think I shared even a single conversation with in high school.

And now, through Facebook, I am again astonished at how many people knew me AND remember who I am.

I was never in the “popular” group, I was only in a couple of the plays, I took honors courses but never qualified as a true “academic.”  And yet, I guess I floated enough between all of these groups that people remember me.  I just recently contacted another one of the drama geeks that I was kind of friends with in high school through Facebook.  I always expect people to say, “Uh…and you were?”  And yet that has NEVER happened.

I guess now that we are ten (almost 15, yikes) years from those times, we are just curious.  What happened to so and so?  What are you doing now?  How did you get here from there?  These are burning questions.  We have all had adventures, unique and not so much, and now we can all sit back and look at each others lives with more respect and understanding then we ever did in high school.

If you were to ask me ten (okay, fifteen) years ago that I would be communicated with some of the people I now talk to regularly, I would have rolled my eyes and said, “Yah, whatever.”  And yet, here I am.  Looking at others profiles, wondering, “What did YOU do that got you where you are?”

The astonishing thing is, they are wondering the same thing about me.