It's not a wonder I look in once in a blue moon to stalk people and post the ridiculousnesses of my life (which I then expand upon here. Seriously? I'm a blogger more than a FB/Twitterer, like I'm an emailer more than a texter. Is it only me who equates these things with the drugs of the 80s? I'd be the stoner over a tweeker. Not just because of the munchies and inactivity involved versus the energy and activity that the other side of the coin is connected with...but maybe the brownies and the intense need to make food (I did attend the University of CA at Santa Cruz, after all...man did those people feed me well.))
Where was I?
Right, pondering my navel.
I was friended by another HS acquaintance recently and I started to wonder what all had become of their group. I always felt like I was at the periphery, only there because my best friend from high school had struck up a friendship...with this particular girl, actually. The one time I found myself near her, post-high school (and slumming the Berkeley area with the group of odd-fellows I'd befriended and my wonderful roomie (dude, how did you even put up with me?!?), it was awkward, to say the least, to be around one another sans my bff from hs. I do believe that was the very last time I had any contact with her. And she seemed so...well...normal, no longer the crazy red-head from high school.
Fast forward 17 years (I KNOW!) as I think about my baby brother starting his first college-level-esque classes (he's doing what used to be known as summer bridge, now known as "XL" at Pasadena City College (!)), combined with a comment I heard from that same bunch of girls with regards to one of their number deciding to attend, as a last-minute switch, a tiny college in the South vs the huge UC where her group of friends were going. The gist was that they were ready to be the weird fish going into the big ocean to meld with/find more of their kind and stop being seen as weird, where as she was going where she would stand out, on purpose.
To me, who was going to a tiny little UC so I could get away from everyone, this seemed an unfair judgement. Were they thinking the same about me?
To me now, with my baby bro choosing PCC over any other Community College in the area (it's LA, there are loads), I get it. He's picked a school close to home, yes, but also far enough away from his current neighborhood that maybe, just maybe, he'll find the pond has turned into a lake instead. Maybe, just maybe, he'll see just how he fits into the puzzle of society, without, you know, having to go 370 miles away like his big sister had to.
1 comment:
Hee hee, yeah my little bro is a little closer in age to me...10 years. But it's interesting watching him do his own thing. He's the homebody of all of us kids.
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