Who ever liked high school anyway...

I received this email from an old friend of mine a few days ago. We were very good friends at the beginning of my high school years. She was a bit older, and graduated before me and then for a slew of different reasons we lost touch. A few months ago I got an email from her and we reconnected. I am going to see her in July when I visit Boston, and it will be the first time in over a decade that we will meet face to face. By a weird turn of events, a few other people from that same crowd of high school friends has also contacted me recently. We will all be meeting for dinner on my trip. I almost can't believe it.

In my reply to her email, I wrote that from an academic point of view, I would have been better off getting my GED as early as possible and going straight to college. I found high school to be a complete waste of time and I can honestly say I learned NOTHING of value there. In fact, without sounding cliche, I learned everything I needed to know in kindergarten. But from a life lessons point of view, I would not trade one minute of the life I had with all of them. I learned so much about myself and who I am, and some of my fondest memories prior to college are the times I spent with those people.

so, this morning i was sitting at the bean counter. i have been doing that every morning lately. have my coffee, read the paper, yada yada. anyway, at the table behind me were 4 high school students (Doherty). i was a little annoyed at first because they were a bit loud. i couldn't figure out why they weren't in school. then i heard them talking about when they were going to head back to school. how they were going to sneak back in. i've heard this conversation before. 15 years have gone by & it's all the same. my eyes started to fill up. i mean it, i really wanted to cry. it made me think of all you guys. for years i thought of all the time we wasted. if we had just gone to classes then maybe i wouldn't have screwed up the rest of my life. maybe i would have stayed in college. today was different. today i thought of all the good times we had. the great conversations at friendlys & theos. we were learning, just in a different way. if we had gone to classes then we wouldn't have had those experiences. we wouldn't have had each other. & i wouldn't be where i am today. still screwed up, but ok with that. proud of who i am today.

i won't ever think of that as wasted time again. it must have meant something then because here we are again. 15 years later.
i love you all.