The weather seems to have given up its bipolar behaviour and settled on a lovely middle ground, if only for a day or two. I happen to like spring, so i’m happy. Spring is strange for me, because i’m not especially a native to the season. I’m in my glory in the cool days of autumn and the chill of winter, but spring is just the yellow light before the green and heat of summer and it always makes me a little uneasy. It’s a season that moves… wind, rain, growth, warmth. Fall is so different, the way it settles down and leaves you with a polite dusting of snow and a christmas tree.
It’s hard to get a good read on spring (or any other season) while you’re in high school because it’s all skipping school to sit in your bedroom with the windows wide open or idly walking home even though you have much too much homework to do. School adds purpose to spring, because you’re trapped inside and you want to get out. Momentum. Somehow (i know how: through whining and bitching and using all of my connections to my best advantage) i wound up in class fall/winter and working in the spring/summer. So, i’ve got a building for me to escape, but it’s not really the same as school because i like it here and they pay me to do things i really don’t mind doing at all. So, i’ve lost all of my momentum; i am not out the door like a shot at 5pm to jump into a pair of shorts and a tee-shirt and do whatever people do in spring. I wouldn’t even know what they do anyhow.
So, yeah, spring finally feels like it’s here. Maybe i’ll go take a walk…
high school
I just ate a whole box of tic tacs. I don’t really know why… i don’t feel especially hungry, but i haven’t really eaten a square meal for a while now so i suppose i could use some snackage to get me up to speed. When i first moved into my house i never wanted to walk all the way downstairs to the kitchen to eat, so i just ate altoids all day. All day. I have to say, altoids are a bit better tasting and more filling then these horrid little tic tacs are, but i don’t especially mind. It’s funny what i’m capable of doing just because i’ve established momentum. Eat a tic tac, eat two, and suddenly i’m eating a box. I need to equip myself with a set of brakes, or else i’ll always be coasting down hills. Or something. Time to open up my second box…
So, first you take a bunch of high school friends and put them in an apartment four three hours with 7 electrical musical instruments, and then you take most of those same high school friends and give them a largish bottle of vodka, several gallons of orange juice, and their favourite Simpsons episode of this season (around which they construct a drinking game). Then, take the only two that are vaguely drunk, put them in a car with the totally sober one, and send them deep deep into the suburbs to go bowling. Yes, bowling. And, that, my dear reader, is how to have a fun Sunday during spring break..
Yesterday i met up with Andrea, who used to be the third person in our little circle of insanity along with Gina and I. For some obscure reason Andrea and i hadn’t seen each other since graduation, so our time together was chock full of catching up on all the people we’ve been crushing on since then, and all the music we’ve been listening to. Inexplicably, i managed to spend $40 on used cds despite claiming that my only goal for the day was to buy Pinkerton, which i never did find.
What’s was funny is that we ran into another one of our fellow graduates quite randomly in a diner, and we proceeded to sit and chat for a while. All of us seemed to agree that this “getting old” business was no fun, and that we still had dreams more than we had goals. But, then i said how i felt like a totally different person now and the two of them looked at me as though i had grown a new head (which, apparently, would be the only way they could imagine feeling different; alas, it was the same head they’d always known). I honestly do feel like a different person, because now i’m living a life different than the one i had been living. I live on my own, i have nearly all new friends, and my personality has even changed a little. I’m not the same! But, anyway, they both said they didn’t feel any different at all, which is part of what was bothering them about getting older. Maybe they changed, and they just don’t yet know how…
After the movie we saw a friend of mine who i haven’t been in school with for over half a decade, though i saw her almost exactly two years ago this week. The last time I saw her was at the sneak-preview day for accepted students at Drexel; i remember that she was fairly sure she’d be attending a different college but she was going to be a journalism major too and we had fun catching up with each other. Later that day i wound up on the lawn of Buckley Green with Gina, Joey, and our old friend Matt. We just sat there and speculated on all the ways college would change our lives. The conversation is etched into my memory indelibly as one of those eerily foreshadowing moments that seem like they were originally found on 90210 on that last episode before they all went to college together.
Here we are two years later. At the movie theatre, when i asked how she was, she told me she had a little girl. She couldn’t find a picture of her to show me. When she asked me what my major was at Drexel i said “Journalism, still,” and she said “That was my major…” I told her to take care of herself and she smiled at me.
People shouldn’t be allowed to have sex while they’re in college. Especially the smart people.