ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

Tonight my boyfriend and I went to the grocery store, which is rare for a Thursday because we normally shop on the weekend and buy food for the whole week, but the holiday threw us off. I had just finished collecting a pork loin from the butcher and was heading back toward the produce section when I spotted this girl who looked strangely familiar. I could tell I definitely knew her, because she was giving me the same weird look I must have been giving her. We scooted our carts up together and instantly began puzzling out who the other person was. My boyfriend slipped away with the grocery list as the powwow began. We both remembered the other’s name, but I was confused at first because I couldn’t figure out whether I knew her from high school or college. She had a KU shirt on so it was throwing me off. It was high school. I went to two high schools and she was from the second one. We chatted excitedly for a little while and then I scribbled my e-mail address on the back of a Target receipt for her and we went on our separate ways. She had just come back from a four week trip. I wanted to ask her more about it. I wanted to tell her that I had traveled recently too so she would think I was interesting. I wanted to ask her, “Were you too cool for me in high school, or did I just imagine that because you’re pretty and I wasn’t used to people like you being nice to me?”

The crazy coincidence I just can’t get over is that this past weekend my boyfriend’s sister introduced me to Facebook, which I liked better than MySpace, which I never really got into. Anyway, over the course of the week I’ve become semi-obsessed with Facebook because I quickly discovered that there are people I know on there from school that I haven’t talked to in like 10 years. And I’ve reconnected with some of the people I was friendly with at my first high school. It’s been really great, and I kind of feel like now I can finally appreciate these people for how interesting and fun they are. In high school, my serious insecurity problems kind of got in the way of having healthy friendships. So I’ve been talking with two of these girls from my first high school last night and today, and then I run into this other girl in the grocery store. Just out of nowhere.

I guess the reason I feel so blown away and feel this is worth mentioning is that I realized I’ve never had a lot of friends my age, mostly just friendly acquaintances, and now I’m not completely sure why. My coworker friend and I were discussing it recently and I think that although I do fine with older people and younger people, I’m still often insecure around people my own age. Which I think is weird. It’s like when you realize you have a bad habit that you never saw before, and not only are you unsure what caused it, you’re not quite sure how to make it go away. While my boyfriend and most of the people I know in Kansas City did go to the same high school as me, they were all at least a couple of classes ahead of me. Now it makes me wish that I hadn’t spent so much time in high school being convinced that the people in my class were only being nice to me out of pity. The friendliness with which I’ve been welcomed this week makes me think I missed out on some good friendships. I’m glad I’m finally in a position to better appreciate these people this time around.