Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Learning The Hard Way



This post wont come as any breaking news to those who know me up close.  And for those who don't, well just wipe the drool off your mouth because I'm not about to disclose anything scandalous either.  However, I broach today's topic with a little trepidation.  Regret. Talking about regret means I have to admit stuff. Although my past is not weaved with the seduction of Reality-TV fodder (well, maybe a little), neither is it a chaste and innocuous tale I'll be sharing with my kids anytime never. Whether the details of it are unsavory or mundane, some of it just plain embarrasses me. Indeed, there is a price I've paid for every choice, good and bad, and lord knows there's not enough room on my blog to illuminate all of the glorious details but I'll give you a peek inside my past--of what not to do-- because I have a point here, I'm sure.

A LITTLE HISTORY

I spent my entire educational career obsessed with something totally unrelated to academia. Pulling a 'C' average was just a means to maintain my social life, 'cause Monday through Friday it was my personal mission to snag me a boyfriend! This private manifesto began in kindergarten with a boy named Chris (who would never let me lay my nap-mat next to him), and was galvanized by Joey in 2nd grade (who I always chased and kicked in the nuts because I thought it was "flirting"), and eventually scrawled over 300 tear-stained pages of my high school diary. Unfortunately (or fortunately) boys didn't like me until I was about fifteen years old. I was a lanky, underdeveloped, freckle faced, red-head with braces.  I knew the odds were stacked against me, so I had to compensate. 

In middle school I probably wasted the bulk of my paper-route money on aqua-net and wet-n-wild cosmetics in attempts to make myself beautimus for all those boys who had no interest in me. Freshman year, I spent all four-hundred dollars of my baby-sitting cash on a brand-name wardrobe that was sure to catch their eye. To my horror, I found out labels didn't have the same boyfriend currency in high school as they did in 8th grade. I was sixteen years old before I finally went steady with someone longer than a week and, as irony had it, he attended our rival school.