Back When I Knew Everything

This was me once, when I was 15 years old, in 9th grade.

My boyfriend’s name was Aaron Tuck, I have no idea where he is now but wherever it is I’m sure he’s causing lots of heartache to some poor woman who loves him desperately regardless.

I thought I was massively fat, even though I’d love to be that weight again now.   It never stopped me from being myself and thinking other people could go screw themselves, another thing I’d love to have now.

I had quite a lot of freedom.  My parents gave me a lot of trust and were very involved in my life.   I often had later curfews than my friends, had my own phone line before them and was allowed to date when for other friends it was still strictly forbidden.  My freedom made a lot of my friend’s parents fear me (by fear I mean hate) and they always thought I would be a bad influence on their kids.   I used to laugh together with my parents about all the things they were getting up to that their parents had absolutely no idea about.  Often things far worse than I was doing.  Their little angels!

Spike from Degrassi Jr High was my idol.   Hence the hair.  I’m pretty sure I single handedly kept the Aqua Net company in business.  There’s also probably a hole in the ozone with my name on it, because I was all about the aerosol.

Looking back I’m not so sure she was the greatest role model, seeing as she was the teenage pregnancy lesson of the show… but our similarities pretty much ended with the hairstyles.   She was way more girlie than I was and clearly my ovaries were just as buggered back then.

I really had my own style.  I knew what I liked and never apologized for it or for not conforming with the other kids at school.   I loved that I didn’t blend and while I sometimes envied the more popular ‘preppy’ girls at school, I would never have traded.

I was 15 when I started high school.

My best friend was named Aaron too (seen hugging me in the pic).  I thought we would be friends our entire lives and that the closeness we had then would last forever.   We’d known each other since we were 12, which was such a long time then.  I told him everything, he knew me better than anyone.  I had no idea that by the time I was 16, we’d have drifted so far apart that I’d be left wondering what on earth happened.   Nor would I know that within a year he’d move away and we’d lose touch completely, that the next time we’d speak would be over 15 years later and we’d be so vastly different that I could almost not remember the people we used to be and the bond we had.

My other best friend was named Peggi (in white in the pic).  We met in social studies class on my first day of high school, and somehow figured out that we knew Aaron in common.   We seemed to have nothing else in common at all, but little did I know that she would become one of my closest friends throughout high school and university.   We were two kids with big dreams of getting off our little island together, who ended up both moving all over the globe separately, wondering when or if our paths would ever cross again as adults.

When I was 15 I had no idea what the Netherlands was.  I did know what Holland was but not where.  It was never really a thought for me because it was a world away and not somewhere I ever thought I’d have to know anything about or have any desire to visit.   Who knew that in a few short years this new Internet thing would become so popular and that one day, when I was 18, I’d sit at a computer at my college and randomly speak to the man who would later become my husband… in the Netherlands.

I was reading someone’s blog today and they were talking about being a teenager in the 80’s and 90’s and suddenly I was flooded with memories.   All the things I thought back then, how small my world was and how little I knew about how much life changes as you get older.

I love my teenage me, I wouldn’t change a single thing about her or the people she knew, the things she did or the life she lived.   Sometimes I think she could teach me a thing or two even now.

I wonder what she would think of me…