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on being a weird little kid
Nov. 2nd, 2011 02:48 amLindsey and I went to Florida on the weekend of the 22nd, and it was pretty great! This was my 10-year high school reunion; the best parts of it were seeing my family and a few dear friends that I see from time to time anyway (Brett ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zip4096 and Garrett, although it'd been a while since I'd seen Garrett!). There were some sparsely-attended events at the school, but a pretty big crowd of people came out for the bar-hopping on Saturday night.
Oh! And we had a pretty long conversation with Mrs. Thomas, my favorite math teacher from high school, who was at the alumni hang-out thing on Friday night. I'd sent her some long emails for "Thank Your Math Teachers" day a few years ago, which she confirmed that she got! She remains really cool, so that's good :)
I think it's not uncommon to get stressed out, when one's memories of being a teenager come flooding back. There were home movies. Moreover I ran into a bunch of people that I hadn't seen for a decade, and walked around the campus that seemed so much bigger back then. And I remembered what it felt like; I was pretty awkward, and I knew it. I think a lot of it stemmed from this conceit where I saw myself as the protagonist in some story ultimately about morality. It's hard to explain, but the feeling sticks with me. It's hard to disentangle too -- did I feel huge sweeping emotions about trivial events and small interactions because I was young, and that's what young people do, or was it the bizarre viewpoint? Or perhaps younger people are just more prone to bizarre viewpoints? I've wondered if I would like me, if I met a younger version; but I'm generally pretty OK with childrens...
Getting over Christianity probably helped that a lot; I remember how *that* felt too, actually.
I talked to my mom, though, and she assures me that I was a pretty OK kid. Probably more importantly, you can't make yourself retroactively cooler or more sane. So let's do this.
Still freaking out occasionally about US politics. But actually, reading Howard Zinn helps, for the perspective -- people have been really terrible and inhuman to each other for a long time, and yet, I think the human condition is on the upswing! I don't think I'd prefer to live in any other period of history that's happened yet. So let's do this.
zip4096 and Garrett, although it'd been a while since I'd seen Garrett!). There were some sparsely-attended events at the school, but a pretty big crowd of people came out for the bar-hopping on Saturday night.Oh! And we had a pretty long conversation with Mrs. Thomas, my favorite math teacher from high school, who was at the alumni hang-out thing on Friday night. I'd sent her some long emails for "Thank Your Math Teachers" day a few years ago, which she confirmed that she got! She remains really cool, so that's good :)
I think it's not uncommon to get stressed out, when one's memories of being a teenager come flooding back. There were home movies. Moreover I ran into a bunch of people that I hadn't seen for a decade, and walked around the campus that seemed so much bigger back then. And I remembered what it felt like; I was pretty awkward, and I knew it. I think a lot of it stemmed from this conceit where I saw myself as the protagonist in some story ultimately about morality. It's hard to explain, but the feeling sticks with me. It's hard to disentangle too -- did I feel huge sweeping emotions about trivial events and small interactions because I was young, and that's what young people do, or was it the bizarre viewpoint? Or perhaps younger people are just more prone to bizarre viewpoints? I've wondered if I would like me, if I met a younger version; but I'm generally pretty OK with childrens...
Getting over Christianity probably helped that a lot; I remember how *that* felt too, actually.
I talked to my mom, though, and she assures me that I was a pretty OK kid. Probably more importantly, you can't make yourself retroactively cooler or more sane. So let's do this.
Still freaking out occasionally about US politics. But actually, reading Howard Zinn helps, for the perspective -- people have been really terrible and inhuman to each other for a long time, and yet, I think the human condition is on the upswing! I don't think I'd prefer to live in any other period of history that's happened yet. So let's do this.
