Remember When...

I've been on MySpace a bit recently.

My cousins are also on myspace, as are some of their friends. It's pretty cool to be able to catch up on what's happening in their lives.

The oldest of my cousins is the same age as my sister (21) and the rest are younger.

What is amazing is remembering the time in my life when the most important thing wasn't whether we could afford the mortgage or decorating the bathroom. The most important thing was so-and-so fancying such-and-such and thingy has fallen out with whosit because they both fancy doodah.

How important those things seemed then. I tend not to think back to when I was sixteen much. That's me on the right there at sixteen. I was pretty goofy at 16, all told. I only wore a little makeup, I had bad hair. I wore fairly trendy clothes, but because I was slim and the trend was towards baggy, I look - well like that ->

It's Funny, really. I remember spending some of my summer at Becca's house writing stories about these amazing girls (we reversed our initials to get the initials of the heroines!) who always pulled the boys they wanted and did other cool stuff. Sleepover talk was invariably about who fancied who and how far they'd been. Not that there was ever much to say there! Some of the girls who were my "friends" then were much cooler than me. I'm not sure what it was about me that made me not cool.
Probably that I worked a little bit but was also reasonably bright. Or maybe that I wasn't worried that I didn't have a pair of adidas trousers, trainers, coat... Maybe it was because I didn't know why I wasn't cool.
In part I believe that it was because I wasn't well off, and it was a pretty posh school.
Anyway, remembering how important all that stuff felt then has helped me to realise that in another eight years things which seem important now may not seem so. It's also made me remember that the way things feel is not always as they are - some of my peers thought I was really popular, when I thought that hardly anyone liked me.

I still have only the vaguest grip on what's actually important, silly little things often seem more important than they are. I often read too much into what people say. I still overreact - I bet I still will in 8 years.

I hope that I haven't become to jaded though. I learnt some things the hard way, things like some people are only out for what they can get or don't get drunk the night before an exam. I hope I don't expect the worst too often though.