Ten years have passed since I graduated from high school. I find it hard to believe that I’m that old. I’ve thought a lot about what I’d like to tell myself if I could send a message to me in 1992. What would I say? I think first of all, I’d tell myself to lay off the snacks. I’d say something like, “I realize that you have the metabolism of a hummingbird now, but you are going to lose it during the next few months, and I’m going to have to lug your passion for junk food around for the next 10 years or so. I haven’t been under 200 pounds since I was you!”
The second thing I’d tell me is to ditch the girlfriend. I’d warn myself that the relationship pretty much goes from bad to living hell after high school, and I can save myself a few months of degradation and misery by getting it over with.
I’d woud also like to tell myself that a few people in my life weren’t going to be around that much longer and I should spend a little more quality time with them.
But as one Guns ‘N Roses song says, “Yesterday, there were so many things I was never told.” Even if I had been told, I doubt I would have listened, even to myself.
Like a lot of young people on the threshold of adulthood, I was certain that I had it all figured out and that I was way smarter than everybody around me. I know a lot of people my age say that, but I have concrete proof of my arrogance.
I recently unearthed a journal I kept during senior English with Mrs. Havrilla. After reading through it, one can safely conclude that I was a pompous little (expletive deleted). One entry proudly proclaims, “(Shallow) people used to really bother me, but since I have matured mentally, these trashy peasants no longer concern me.”
Boy, don’t you just want to take that guy out back and kick the crap out of him? “Matured mentally?” Give me a break! Nathan Poulnot said to me in my yearbook, “I think you need to come party with the big dogs. You look like you need it.” It was his way of calling me an uptight stick in the mud. That’s a far more accurate description of myself than “mentally matured.”
Another entry arrogantly suggests that “advertisements don’t sway me that easily; neither do politicians.” This from a guy who would end up voting for Bill Clinton in November of that year and would eventually be an avid drinker of clear Pepsi.
One of the entries exposes a little homophobia in this little self-fashioned intellectual. I wrote, “I’m not a ‘gay-basher;’ I’d treat them like anyone else so long as they were attracted to someone besides me.” Of course, earlier in the same entry, I let loose a tirade against homosexuals that would have made Jerry Falwell look like Rosie O’Donnell.
That is an interesting entry in retrospect, because I found out a year later that one of my closest and dearest friends during that time was gay and had known for a while but was afraid to tell us. I can’t say that I blame him.
A lot has changed in 10 years. However, some things remain the same. A few people still think I’m a pompous little (expletive deleted), but now I have my wife to call me “Tony the Colon” (because of what a colon is full of) whenever I get too high and mighty.
I may not be the world conqueror that I thought I was back in those days, but at least I’m really happy with who I am, who I married and what I’m doing. I wouldn’t trade them for anything. Not even for the chance to go back and smack some wisdom into the self-assured little Georgia boy I used to be.