Type + Writer, Day 4

Remember Me When
How funny is it that I was just thinking about my teenage self yesterday. I needed some photos to use on my JS template layout about traveling. I found some old shots of the trip I took to Canada with my French class. Out of TEN total pictures that I have. I can’t even begin to imagine how many pictures I would have taken if I went today. I wasn’t so involved in recording my life when I was 17. I was more consumed with living it. There’s a huge difference right there. I want to remember the little details and highlight them. Before it was all about getting out there and being in the moment, no thought to how this moment would shape my life. Let’s move on to another difference. As a teenager I was still wearing my kiddie pajamas. The green ones that were way too short on me. I used to pull up my athletic socks to hide the gap between them and the bottom of my pant legs. There’s a picture of me just like this scrunched up on the couch with a book planted in front of my nose. That’s what I remember most about myself then. I was always reading something or other. I still am. My tastes range from one extreme to the other. Take the last two books I have read: My Life in France by Julia Childs and Gil’s All Fright Diner by someone or other. One’s a biography of a great American chef, the other? A story about a werewolf and a vampire that travel the backroads of America ridding the world of zombies one head at a time. I was always so unattached back then. I had no idea what I wanted to be when I got to be an adult. I just took random suggestions from other people as to what I should do. Nowadays, I wish I could go back in time and smack the ever lovin’ heck out of myself. Why do they expect teenagers to know what they want to do for the rest of their lives? I certainly had no idea that educating wee minds would not thrill me to my fingertips and make my heart thump like the Energizer Bunny. I didn’t find my passion in life until I was 35 years old!! Such a travesty, I tell ya. Also, I took the easy way out of things when I was a teenager. That kind of mindset has gotten in my way too many times to count these days. I want to be successful, but when things get hard or weird I find ways to drop out and ease back. I think it’s a learned trait. One that I am working through. Another similarity? I still love horror movies. The creepier the better. I used to be okay with gore, but can’t seem to stomach the needless blood spatters going on in film today. I have so many of the movies I used to watch back then and drag them out every now and then to relive those moments when things were still dark and unknown.