Most Saturday mornings, I am awake before Chris leaving me with 2 options: either get in a workout before he gets up or sit on the couch playing with his computer. Generally, I opt for B. So a couple of Saturday’s ago, I was participating in my favorite waste of time activity, searching the internet and after an hour or so decided to check my hotmail account because well, I’d run out of blogs to read. There, in my inbox, was an email from classmates.com. Apparently, someone had sent me an email through their website. And for the low, low price of $39.99 I could find out who.
So sweet of them.
I logged in and started looking through all the folks signed up in the Chelsea High School Class of 1995 group. Lots of names I didn’t know. Really, lots and lots of names I didn’t know. I could see that 4 people had visited my “site” but I couldn’t see who. 4 people. Wow. Even 13 years later I’m still not popular. Seeing who is apparently also a feature of the 40 bucks they want me to drop. Moving on. So I clicked on the email and got the same pay now message but this time it did offer a 7 day free trial. I signed up, checked the email and then cancelled the account.
That money will be better spent at Banana.
The email was from a good friend. We’d kept in up with each other over the years but had lost touch in the last couple. I emailed her a couple of days later and we were right back sending long emails getting caught up on what we’re up to now. She’s got a daughter in the 4th grade. Seriously, that made my head hurt.
I sent her the picture of us from vacation which I have decided just might be the best picture we’ve ever taken. I also sent her one of the family from Noah’s dedication. She knew my brother, all 85 pounds of him, and my parents so I wanted her to see them but really, I wanted to show off Noah. Chris and I are okay to look at but by far my nephew is the cutest member of the family. Besides, I knew she was gonna hit me with some gorgeous pictures of her two kids. Noah’s my trump card.
Sure enough, her next email had photos attached. Although they had strange names like “Homecoming 1”. My heart literally stopped. I though Oh no, it’s a picture from high school. I stared at it for a minute or so wondering what in heavens name I would find when I opened it. I looked around to make sure now one was standing around my office, took a deep breath and opened this:
During Homecoming week, we had themed dress up days and one of them was Red Neck Day. Kind of redundant for some folks but nonetheless. This photo was from senior year and I feel pretty certain we are in our AP English classroom. I had forgotten how long my hair was. What was I thinking? I found myself laughing out loud at how ridiculous I looked. I also found I was smiling thinking about my friends there with me. Haven’t seen them in years.
Anyway, I forwarded the pictures to Chris and said something like “Wow. I’d forgotten just how bad I looked in high school”. Chris responded with, “I’ve seen that before.”
And he married me anyway.
Of course, this got me thinking about high school and all that has happened since then. Life certainly hasn’t turned out the way I expected but then again, I can’t exactly remember what I was expecting. I knew I wanted to major in English because I loved to read, loved to write and because my AP English teacher told me I shouldn’t. Gauntlet, thrown down. Almost mailed my first college English paper to her with the 98 grade highlighted at the top but thought perhaps I would take the high road instead.
In retrospect, I should have mailed her the paper.
Apart from the major, nothing else turned out the way I’d envisioned. But that’s okay. In fact, it turned out pretty great. Wonderful husband, terrific friends, good job. All things to be grateful for and believe me, I am every day. But this picture also got me thinking back to those high school years and finding I am grateful for those days.
I had a great time at Chelsea High School. A small group of us chose to leave our current high school when we were rezoned. The audacity of that amazes me now. Not sure I would have the guts to do it again. We quickly got involved. Student council, football, cheerleading, choir, drama, math team, band, you name it, one of us from our group was doing it. The original Chelsea kids seemed to take us in relatively easily. I made some great friends. Not a single one of us was like any of the others. All those high school clique clichés didn’t really apply to us which was fine. We made it work.
So Mom, if you could go ahead and dig out that memory box from high school you’re still holding for me, I promise to bring it back to Texas the next time we drive home. I think I’d like to take another stroll down memory lane. And the wedding dress. I’ll take that too.
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