High School : RIP

I'm "home" in Portland this weekend, and my mom asked me to go through a box of my stuff that's been in their garage since I graduated. Yes, one box. Over time, and various reorganizations and routine "throw-aways", I consolidated the first 18 years of my life down to one box. One.

In my house, when you graduate and go away to school no shrine is left in memoriam of you, no normalcy at home remains, and the stuff deemed important enough to keep gets boxed and relegated to the garage. And in my case, moved into three different garages as the home unit family upgraded houses.

Going through "the box" was bittersweet. A lot of fun and tender, long-distant memories resurfaced. I reread old yearbook entries and felt pretty good about the high school person I was. A few scattered photos were here and there, and I made me smile.

Interwoven amongst the Homecoming dances, Hubcats, and inside jokes however, was a darker underlayer that I doubt many high schoolers wish to remember. I read a lot of notes back and forth between friends, journal entries, and new year's resolutions that weren't too bright or sunny. My life was so self-imposed dramatic! In rereading, I was awfully embarrassed of the person I was--how silly a teenager I was! (Good to think in ten years I'll think about how silly a 23-year-old I was!) Man oh man oh man. I think High SChoolers must be bored--they create drama out of nothing. Kudos to the two friends I still have from high school who actively read my blog--way to stick around til life got good. I appreciate you!

Anyway, the moral of the story is--I wouldn't go back to High SChool (unless I were Gabriella in High SChool Musical--which we watched again last Thursday night) for anything. Life is much much much too good right now to consider anything differently. This also makes me think of one of my favorite quotes from one of my BYU professors:

What we were is not as important as what we are; and what we are is not as important as what we can become.