As I dried myself off today after taking a nice shower I noticed my shoulders were peeling....badly. Last Saturday got fried. How is this relevant at all to my topic? Well let me show you the complex stream of thought path....
Peeled shoulder from sunburn -> I wonder how other people can have pretty tans and not be peeled ->wait a lot of the people i'm thinking of go to the tanning bed -> Hmmm remember those girls in 8th grade that used a tan towel?...-> wait..TANNING TOWEL...we were like 13...-> WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING
I went to a SMALL school. My graduating class had 118 kids ( I think we started High School with 162) and I really mean it when I say everyone knew everyone's business. The true sadness in this? High school politics in "my" town begins in elementary school, not exaggerating. If you didn't get your first kiss by third grade, let alone be in a relationship by the time you were 12...something was odd with you. This coming from the girl who didn't get her first kiss until the age of 22 ...:-X... Of course not everyone had that perception of growing up in Tappahannock, but it also depends on who you were, who your family was, and most important...what group you were told to be in. The "A" group were ( get ready for this unstereotypical hot mess) the Limited Too wearing ( remember, middle school ) , straight A's, number one softball players, Pretty girls...and what ACDS transfers they decided to accept into it. The B group? Honor Roll Band Kids, not in the advanced classes, with enough country-bumpkin boyfriend drama to be Tappahannock's Jersey Shore. And yes...I'm still talking about middle school. And the other groups could be broken down into but are extremely irrelevant to this post. Lets just say I sat with both at lunch, depending on who spoke to me that day...which also depended on if something was going on at church or if it was O.M season ( the A group girls did O.M in middle school...told you..Tappahannock has some screwed up politics...)
Today's memory? 8th Grade Geometry Class. I think there were 13 of us. 3 girls and 3 boys from the A group, 2 girls from the B group...and then the rest of us( 4 boys and myself)..The girls sat together , of course, and I remember one morning some of the girls talking about the new tanning booth a mother had. That morning they had all gotten together and used some tanning towel. I was so jealous! How could this little white girl have such a pretty tan when I was the Spanish one? Looking at my skin at this moment..it was still darker and perfect. But looking back on all this now (not just this memory of course) it makes me wonder. What the hell was I thinking?Why did I want to be a 40 year old woman when I was 13?
If I had known that 90% of these girls would be married/engaged 10 years later, some with children...I would've never aimed to be one of them. I'm not saying that being 23 married, with 2 kids, and still in Tappahannock is bad. Honestly...not. I just can't imagine myself in those shoes. I don't even like the idea of a serious relationship right now let alone living at "home." And I'm obviously not a fan of Tappy....come on, I'm currently living in a different hemisphere. I rather have some room to really find out who I am...which obviously is still in progress. But then , what about the real negative side to all this?
A 13 year old shouldn't be sitting at home crying because she wasn't being invited to the "cool" parties and DRINKING. I know I'm not a saint...but really? My cousin and I still joke about his basement birthday party where a beer was passed around..and 3 of us sat in the other room not wanting to partake..and how big of a deal it seemed like. But really think about the situation. Yes..it was one beer being passed around, but how many of those kids were drinking "pros"?And these were the kids parents thought they wanted their kids to be like. Brandtly and I still laugh about it...because, as I said, we're nowhere near saints...but ...we're actually proud now about our decisions when we were kids, and that we're not part of that mold now. Can you imagine how we'd be if we would've been fully accepted by these kids?
I know the times are changing, and I'm a rather liberal person, but there are boundaries. I'm glad we had 4H, and parents who actually watched what we did. At the time...it was a different story. But I'm fully ok with where my life is now...even with it's wreckless moments/months.Yet, I'm not in Tappahannock....I'm not married...and I finally have time to be selfish and worry about myself. Something I think some people don't realize they're giving away. I may have missed out on a whole chunk of childhood because I wasn't "accepted" by the kids I was "suppose" to be part of...but at least now I'm living experiences they'll never have. It's interesting.
I know the times are changing, and I'm a rather liberal person, but there are boundaries. I'm glad we had 4H, and parents who actually watched what we did. At the time...it was a different story. But I'm fully ok with where my life is now...even with it's wreckless moments/months.Yet, I'm not in Tappahannock....I'm not married...and I finally have time to be selfish and worry about myself. Something I think some people don't realize they're giving away. I may have missed out on a whole chunk of childhood because I wasn't "accepted" by the kids I was "suppose" to be part of...but at least now I'm living experiences they'll never have. It's interesting.
I know there are people who are free spirited and getting married/just got married...but knowing them...that's not going to change them at all. haha. They'll be the nifty wives the others of jealous of. But I guess everything really does happen for a reason. It's a cool concept.
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