growing up is crazy part 1/2
Being at my mom’s in the suburbs makes me think of going to school here, more specifically high school, since that was most recent. When I look back, I’m embarrassed at how uptight and socially awkward I was. I know that a lot of creative adults look back and say, “Oh, I was such a nerd!” almost like a badge of pride. It’s just that I have a feeling I was a little dorkier than most.
(archival footage of the thirsty author)
I’ve kept in touch with almost no one who went to my high school, and generally speaking, I don’t feel too sorry about that. Sometimes, though, I really feel like that time was wasted. Why did it take me so long to get comfortable around other people?
It’s hard for me to tell if I didn’t really fit in with much of my graduating class or if I habitually pre-excluded myself before others could reject me, to my own detriment. Facebook tends to support the former interpretation, confirming that the people I’d written off continue to do shit that’s of little interest to me. As for the latter, it’s like, I met up with my friends Tyler and Danielle, both of whom went to my high school. It was so enjoyable to talk to them, and I regretfully thought about all the people I might have been friends with in high school if I had been brave enough to try.
I don’t feel like I’m all that much older than a high school student—I’m 23—but the people in my graduating class have grown in different directions. The conventional wisdom that weird-ish kids grow up to do cool shit turned out to be pretty true, like how Tyler is a boy genius who wrote for the NYT already at like, 21, and Danielle makes hand-painted bike helmets.
(documentation of a nostalgic trip to the kids’ branch of the public library, no pedo)
After a few hours, everyone finished their coffee or tea and we parted ways. I ate a whoopie pie at a gelato shop that didn’t used to be there when I was in high school. Being awkward around people is really painful at first, cause you can often tell when someone is judging you, but you can outgrow it through trial and error, basically, and then social interactions can be painless and even fun. I think I was sort of a late bloomer in terms of putting that together. I think that is forgivable, though, because better late than never. Also, I shouldn’t be too hard on myself because reasonable people agree that high school was—impossibly—both boring and stressful, and a lot of the people there did suck really hard.
I was still in the coffee shop when Tyler sent me a text that said “Growing up is crazy!”
