Second Chance

How often do you get a chance to fix a mistake? A real second chance when you thought one was never going to come?

Ok--I'll answer for you--not nearly often enough.

I was cleaning out my Spam folder and found that Classmates.com had emailed me...again. At one point I was trying to track down an old friend of mine that I had known since we were six years old, and with whom I had parted ways after we shared an apartment for a year. His crazy friends clashed badly with my crazy friends, so it was best that we not hang out anymore...

So Classmates had my number, and has continued to pelt me with Emails in an attempt for me to get the "Gold Package" so I can apparently monitor live web feeds of my old classmates and have their vital signs FedEx'd to me weekly (sorry for the sarcasm). Basically, I don't care about these people anymore--I really didn't like them that well when I was in high school. But when I was in the process of deleting this spam Email, I (like a sucker) clicked on the link out of unkillable curiosity and found a comment by one of my old teachers (whom I hated) which reminded me of another teacher whom I loved dearly.

I decided to leave her a brief Email, which I did (it probably creeped her out), but while on the school's website, I saw that they were cleaning out their old yearbook stash, and had supplies of my Junior and Senior yearbooks! Unbelievable!

For some reason, I could never put my hands on $30 during my high school years, so I never bought one of these books--the only book that I had was from my Sophomore year, and the picture is, seriously, the worst picture of me in existence (no way am I putting it in this blog). The story is: I was awakened at my house during the summer by one of my friends, who told me that we were due in 5 minutes at school to sign up for classes. I threw on some clothes in 2 minutes without looking in a mirror--and I looked like a crazy, homeless person. They took our photos, I missed make-up photo day, and that horrendous shot became an unfortunate documentation of the event which is bound to haunt me forever.

So, it has always kind of been a sore subject with me, because if I need to whip out the old yearbook, "the picture" is there--seriously, it makes me absolutely ill.

So I was very excited that my Junior and Senior yearbooks were available, not just for vanity but again for curiosity's sake. Sure enough, four days later, I had both books in my hands and was remembering that high school wasn't all that bad. It even reminded me of some old friends that I hadn't thought about in quite some time.

This picture from my days in the marching band (yes, they actually put the negative in backward--the drum is supposed to read 'Ludwig' instead of 'giwduL' , which actually is translated "idiot agape" in one of the Celtic dialects). I wonder if I still hold the record: I figured out a way to carry 4 (count 'em) of these bass drums simultaneously (we had a lot of time on our hands).