When I was a kid, it was easy not to have my thoughts fettered with "who am I?" Then I hit adolescence, and it became the main motivation of how I thought and acted. I used to identify myself with the music I listened to and what movies I thought were worth watching. I slowly realized though that even while I still do think I'm cool because I own a 12" copy of New Order's "Run2" it really doesn't say who I am. So what that I think Rear Window is probably the best film ever made? I guess it wasn't enough to just be that.

I'm trying to remember what kind of person I was during high school, and besides the things I liked to do, I really don't know what kind of person I was back then. I can't really ask any of my friends from back then, well, because who knows if they even knew. We were all friends of convenience, neighborhood pals that figured out that we really didn't want to be friends for the long haul once we did figure out who we each were.

I got another one of those classmate spam emails that I still open in my email. They sucker me everytime to go back to that site to peruse the names and remember the faces that pepper my memories of walking the halls of school. Its funny, Dr. P asks me what highschool was like since it seems like such a foreign concept to him since he grew up in Italy. The idea of cool kids, cliques, and a caste system created by a bunch of teens just seemed weird.

I thought about how I all knew of the cool kids, but really, none of them interacted with me unless they had to. It was like they were celebrities. I know now I probably elevated them way too much in my mind, and they were just kids like me with no clue. No one had an agenda more than to figure out what the hell they were doing with their lives.

Its funny that my friends all wanted to be friends with the cool kids, but they had no idea how to break into that crowd. I guess I figured if those people didn't want to be friends with me, fuck them. I remember back in junior high, there was a guy that just moved to the neighborhood and at first, he was open to making friends with everyone, including me. Then he realized quickly that if he wanted to establish himself as a cool kid, he needed to not be friends with everyone. That meant me. Some people enjoy being accepted by people that treat them like badly but I guess I didn't want to be part of that. And now?

It means nothing, yet all of it still weighs on me. I didn't even go to my 10 year reunion a few years back. I didn't go for 2 reasons, whoever I still kept in contact with from highschool I made a conscious choice to, and because of that why would I choose to go revisit with people that really could care less to even talk to me? I guess that's what the irony is, since I'm sitting here going through classmates.com looking at the names. I guess its more like revisiting a feeling that is bittersweet. I fondly look back to most of my past, because well, it brought me where to I am today, and yet I also remember all misery that accompanied it. And yes, Ms. LD, will tell me that the misery was a necessary medicine of life, but I guess its hard to not become bitter or cynical about things. I guess nostalgia eventually takes care of that and washes most of that away. Hopefully.

Good reference and a good listen -> This American Life: Allure of the Mean Friend