Nostalgia, thoughts on

A few months ago, if you'll recall, Facebook got weird. My friends list on Facebook was expanding from a list of current work- and real-life-friends to friends from school that I hadn't seen in 10-20 years, some who I wasn't friends with back then and probably won't become friends with today, and finally, to old boyfriends, and I hadn't yet adjusted to all of that.

Now, it's becoming more usual for an old high school friend to pop up on Facebook and become a friendly addition. And more interesting, more usual for me to actually communicate with them for more than a single "Hey-haven't-seen-you-in-forever-hope-you're-doing-great" message — or not at all — and instead, actually start (re)developing real-life friendships with them.

This has caused me to start feeling a little nostalgic, so I went through some boxes of old photos the other day. My living room floor is now strewn with albums, binders and boxes, and some of it has crept all the way upstairs into my office. What I've found is that I've kept surprisingly few prints from high school. (I never throw out a negative, but the prints seem to be long gone.)

So tonight while I was sitting down with dinner, on a whim I got out my old high school yearbooks and flipped through a couple of them, just to see what I'd find. I thought I knew those books pretty well, but there is a lot I had forgotten. Like names, organizations, friends and some old enemies, which brought back some of the bitterness that is usually connected to nostalgia for me. But here are the thoughts that stood out the most:

Some of the kids in those photos, if I saw them on the street today, I'd estimate to be eight years old. I am not kidding.

Beauty and popularity are contextual. Some of those girls and boys who were considered dweeby or gross in high school were nothing of the sort; it was a carryover reputation from much earlier years. (I include myself in this observation.) I found myself thinking, more than once, "Wow, s/he was getting really cute by this age," about someone I clearly recall not being considered any kind of catch. (I myself only had one or two good-looking years all the way through school; I didn't seem to have blossomed until my late 20s.)

Beauty and popularity are contextual. Some of those girls and boys who were considered hot, "IT", and all that were nothing of the sort; it was a carryover reputation from their friends, parents, and much earlier years. For the first time I could laugh at myself for being so intimidated by some of these people.

Where the hell were the future art directors back in high school? Not on the yearbook staff, I'm afraid. (Oh come on, I know you just weren't mature yet. You were only eight.)

I'm 36 years old, so high school was a half-life ago for me. I've carried a lot of animosity toward that block of time since then (you have to understand, Mean Girls was based on high school life in north suburban Chicago, and I was never near the top of the food chain), but I think I'm finally 100% ready to kick all that to the curb. Though I've actually seen glimpses of that old high school snob attitude from former classmates even in the past year, that's their problem. I have no interest in it being mine anymore.

And so here I am, all right with nostalgia. It had always been laced with a bit of bitterness, but now it's mostly sweet.