4:07 p.m. - 2005-09-09
once upon a time...
Saw this on someone else's blog and thought I'd emulate...
20 years ago...well, 20 years ago, I was 7. I was into soccer, t-ball and unicorns. I was obsessed with horses and would be the recipient of an appaloosa quarter-horse pony in approximately 9 months (for my 8th birthday.) We lived in a huge 5-bedroom (I'm an only child) white farm house on a couple of acres that somehow was about a 3 minute drive to a large shopping mall.
15 years ago...I was 12. Our house had exploded and so we got a new one. I was in 7th grade, hated math, felt unpopular and awkward. I played basketball fairly well and got into my first and only fist-fight with an 8th grader who was a real bitch and whose place I had taken as a starter on the team. She punched me in the face and turned around and I clocked her between the shoulder blades and gave her an athsma attack. Then I ran to the locker room and cried. Amazingly, she approached me the next day and apologized and said we needed to be "on the same side" if we were on a team. That was definitely the most mature act I ever experienced in jr. high.
10 years ago...I was 17. Had just been denied admission to Penn State's main campus which was the only school I had applied for. I thought my life was over. Senior year of high school was a mix of good grades, naughty weekends and being the president of anything you could think of. I got into Ohio University and never looked back, even when PSU main offered to admit me for the following semester.
5 years ago...I was 22. Just graduated from OU. I worked for Good Works as a case manager. Every day I met people with the saddest stories you could ever imagine. For the first week, I went home an dcried each night. But I trained myself to realize that I was doing the most I could to help people. You cry when you feel helpless for someone...if you can do something besides cry, you should and so I did. Not always the best way...but it felt good to really be doing SOMETHING.
5 days ago...I went to my friend's engagement party with Kevin and we won a picnic basket with two bottles of wine and two wine glasses because I knew the most answers on the "How well do you know the bride and groom?" quiz sheet. I have only met the groom once. I must know the bride extremely well.
5 hours ago...I went to visit my mom and meet her new class of 4th graders at the middle school just a mile away from my job.
5 minutes ago...Well, five minutes before I started typing this, I was emailing Liz Cooke, which is weird because we never email. But I heard a rumor she might be coming here this weekend.
