welcome, March!

I think it's cra-cra-cra crazy that March is here. Three months into the new year already -- awesome. Not that I'm anymore excited for another year to go by (growing old sucks) but it brings me closer to achieving that next step -- whatever or wherever it may be.

Plus it also means that the winter blues are coming to an end, thank goodness. I don't ever remember disliking the winter so much before I became acquainted with the frigid and gray winters of Chicago. However, since those days I can't seem to shake off the slump that inevitably comes with winter. Is it the weather? The unending need for sweaters? Or the lack of TV I've had for the past five winters?

Speaking of high school (sort-of), I've had two odd throwbacks to the days of my immediate pre-collegiate years. Today I ran into a kid who graduated a year after me and was pretty cool. He's working at the mall and going to school, and he's gotten taller. Still skinny as hell though, and still super-quiet.

The other thing that got me thinking about high school, however, was an event I covered Saturday.

Now, I've never been one to miss high school. It came and it went, uneventfully. Few things about that period in my life stick out. I can recall spending lots of hours working on the newspaper, running on the cross country team, and the smell of dew on a chilly early spring afternoon on the soccer field. I also kind of remember graduating and some classes.

In any case, I never really had a great time. Didn't really have a lot of friends, didn't really do anything outside of my schoolwork and the extracurriculars. No crazy sex parties, no craziness period. I can't even remember really having a crush on anyone the last few years, mostly because I was always afraid of the popular kids and wasn't into the weird ones. I always figured it was because of the small size of my high school that I never got into anyone.

OK, but the point I'm trying to make is that I never liked high school and I was really glad to get out of it, and I've never looked back and wished to do it over again, as I have other things in life (namely, college). But in covering this science-bowl thing on Saturday, I saw a group of high school students and I envied them, and for the first time I can remember, I wished I could go back to high school too. Not my high school, though, but theirs. The entire experience made me think about how sheltered I've really been for much of my life, and how I continue living in this strange bubble. These nerdy kids have all sorts of opportunities, not only to do well in school and travel to different places but also to meet different kinds of people and have loads of experiences that I've just recognized exist.

This post doesn't make any sense and I'm fine with it. I guess I just don't know what I'm trying to say.