The Ol' Days

Facebook has made me nostalgic, so I've been looking at old photos, watching old home movies and yesterday I dug out my box of journals. (Yeah, that's right. It's a whole box full. I'm a very dutiful journal keeper. They always talk about keeping a journal for posterity or something, but there is SO MUCH for my posterity to read, that it really might be best if they just lit the box on fire and ran away.)

So I was looking through my journal from when I was about 14 or so and it was really hard to read. Not because my handwriting was bad (I have always had extraordinary penmanship) but because I was so annoyed. Because I was so annoying! I remember myself a lot differently than I apparently was. I used to always think that I was a pretty easy teenager to raise and didn't give my parents a lot of trouble. But I was wrong. I was an idiot. What I'm remembering must be more their patience than any angelic behavior on my part.

I can't say for sure how I acted most of the time (though working with the Young Women, I have a pretty good idea), but now I know how I thought and I am SO GLAD that I'm not that girl anymore. Because I'm not. I'm not the same girl I was when I was in Jr. High and High School. Who knew?

And Thank Goodness. If I had to be that girl forever I think I might have exploded from an overload of teenage mood swings, or been shot by some do-gooder who knew it was best for society that I go.

So, what is my point, you are asking? I don't really have one. I don't have to have a point you know. I can ramble on and on and never make a point and no one can stop me. But I was thinking about a girl I knew who got married in 7th grade. How old are you in 7th grade? 12 or 13? Anyway, she and her 7th grade sweetheart are no longer together and it is no wonder. No offense to my vast audience of 7th graders, but kids that age don't know anything!! They are like half people; half themselves and their potential, and the other half puberty, hormones, self pity, candy, jealousy and confusion. And Denial. Yep, shockingly clueless, barely functional. And that is why they send them (kids between the ages of approx. 12-14) to special schools, where they can associate with other special kids who are just as backward as they are. Yep. Jr. High.