While navigating my way to a doctor’s appointment yesterday afternoon I almost ran over approximately fourteen different members of the Deering High School Class of 2009.  Ah, the jaunty caps, the blinding hope, and the strapless dresses peeking out from under polyester gowns.  I was annoyed, of course, because I was running late (and that’s my go-to emotion).

I graduated from high school eight years ago.  Sweet baby Jesus, eight years ago I was forty pounds overweight, rocking a J Crew dress and a nose stud, and walking down an aisle with the shortest and creepiest guy in my class (lining up by height never works in my favor).  I don’t really remember the ceremony besides the speech I had to give.  I remember being the only girl smoking a cigar on the front lawn with the boys.  I remember a brief lunch with my family at the house, opening a box that contained little Tiffany studs which I promptly exchanged for a silver cuff necklace that I have yet to wear (and that doesn’t go with the mall studs I got a few years later AT ALL).  I remember my parents dropping me off at the SuperSecretProjectGraduation event.

Project Graduation I remember in detail.  My mother apologizing to me in advance because the thing had been planned by a particular group of women that my very kind and quiet mother described as “tyrannical”.  Matching t-shirts  handed out on the bus (mine: size Large).  Shuttled to a bizarre boat tour that took us to an apparently haunted island where we had a lobster dinner prepared by two women who were both hunchbacked.  A sub par comedy show following dinner (preformed by a comedian that I had actually hooked up with the previous winter).  Back to the boat, then on to the local equivalent of Chuck E Cheese.  Back to the bus, onto the most rundown movie theater in town to watch Pearl Harbor.  Then bussed out (still in the rain) to a park 20 miles away where we were given stale bagels and cream cheese and no coffee.

Still with me?  Well, then you did better than I.  Because I fell asleep every time we got back on that bus.  And I snore.  So, yeah, that really cemented my legacy within a class of 40 people.  It was a miserable, miserable evening.  And though it may have kept all of us from getting alcohol poisoning that evening the memory of it makes me long for a martini.

But I did have hope.  I was off to a Seven Sisters in the fall, my first choice school.  I had a close group of friends that I loved.  I had more male interest than I knew what to do with.  I was going to graduate from college with honors, rock the Smith alumni circle, and land a job writing for Jane magazine in New York.

Yeah.