Canadutch
There was a girl I knew when I was a kid. She lived up off of Musgrave’s Lane and used to hang out with my friend Sarah a lot. Her name was Angela and I used to think she was such a goodie two shoes. She never wanted to do anything really risky, she was so pretty and polite and always dressed like such a girl. She didn’t really get into boys the way the rest of us did (meaning she didn’t think about -only- boys like we did at one point) and did really well in school. She was our friend though, the one in every group of friends who warns the others about all the trouble they’ll be in if they do … Well you don’t think I’m going to tell you all the naughty things we’ve done, do you?
When we were in our teens she blossomed. She was sort of like the Sandra Bullock of our neighbourhood. The one who never really wore makeup or tried to have any cool image, which the rest of us did. I’ll not go into my Spike from Degrassi hair or my M.C. Hammer pants phases. She was a natural beauty and she had the personality of an angel. It was around this time we really started to appreciate her. She was always so pleasant to be around and I grew to like her an awful lot.
While we were partying, dating, and going to clubs getting “wasted” she was in Air Cadets, the Army Reserves and eventually moved on to the Reg. forces. Sure she partied with us sometimes, but she had her track set and she never had any interest in moving away from it.
This is Angela today.
I got a message from my mother today telling me that Angela was in an article in the paper because she’s in Asia with the Canadian Forces Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) giving aid to those who were hit by the Tsunami.
I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or applaud when I saw the photos of her. So many memories came back from our childhood, the fact that it’s been almost 10 years since I’ve seen her and some of my other childhood friends hit me like a ton of bricks, the proud feeling I felt when I saw how far she’s come and what she’s doing with her life was enormous. All these feelings tugging at me at once.
In any case, I’m incredibly proud of her and a bit envious too. She’ll probably never read this but inside I’m screaming WAY TO GO GIRL!!!
Some people are lucky enough to know what their path is. For the rest of us, it takes a while longer… and some people never make those realisations at all!
She may Google herself (or someone may Google her and bring this to her attention with the link, since you don’t have her whole name). You never know.