Ten Years and Counting

With my ten-year high school reunion quickly approaching, I’ve been giving some thought to how things have changed over the past ten years. The important changes aren’t being able to say I have a B.S. or an M.B.A., but how other parts of my life, especially the social aspects, have changed over the years.

Ten years ago I lived in a very small town in rural Montana. I had to drive two hours to purchase underwear that didn’t come in a Haynes Her Way Six Pack from the local drug store. Like most small towns, there were advantages and disadvantages to growing up this way. Thompson Falls wasn’t exactly a cultural mecca, but my parents did a really good job making sure my brother and I were exposed to things not readily accessible to us like museums, Broadway shows, the ballet (the Nutcracker totally counts), and different parts of the US, Canada and Mexico. Although I didn’t appreciate being dragged to a Genghis Kahn exhibit at the time, and I’d still think it was pretty boring today, I appreciate that my parents took the time and effort to give me those types of experiences.

Back in the day, my house was the gathering place. We had a large day light basement with a ping pong and foosball table, a trampoline and plenty of room outside to run around. There was always food and drinks available and more weekends than not my friends and I ended up hanging out at my house. Now that I am an adult and have to buy my own groceries, I realize that having 10-15 growing kids at your house every weekend is not a cheap endeavor, but knowing where their kid was and providing a safe environment was more important to my parents than the money shelled out for Mountain Dew and Doritos.

Those days the conversations ranged from who was going with who to the homecoming dance to what we wanted to be when we grew up to how much we hated our rival high school, Plains. I don’t want to discount those years as frivolous, but we weren’t exactly trying to solve world hunger. I went to school, played three sports a year, and worked as a life guard in the summer. Looking back, life was just as it should be for a teenager. Even if you include getting my car taken away as a form of grounding for doing something stupid.

Ten years later I’m living in a trendy part of downtown Portland, Oregon, where I can purchase real underwear at any number of stores within a 5 mile radius and no longer have to explain to the bus driver why I am riding the school bus instead of driving my own car. My friends and I still aren’t trying to solve world hunger, but our topics of discussion have changed considerably. We recently toasted to the fact that none of us have to go back to school again. We all have our advanced degrees with the exception of one who moved up quick enough that it’s not necessary for him at this point. We may still not know what we want to be when we grow up, but we all have a pretty solid idea and in the interim are making decent money.

Instead of throwing sleeping bags in the bag of a truck and driving up the mountain to go camping or driving to Missoula to watch a movie, we take trips to Lake Shasta or Las Vegas. We spend our Saturdays tailgating at Oregon State football games instead of going to our respective high schools Friday night football game. Instead of Mountain Dew we’re drinking beer and instead of Doritos we’re eating vegetables. Well, most of the time anyway. And instead of playing organized sports, most of us have gym memberships or run or bike or do something to get physical activity into our lives. Most days I’m quite happy that the era of Suicides and Daily Doubles is over for me, but sometimes it would be nice having someone making you be active and get you into shape.

Amongst the girls, there are still conversations about the guys in our lives (minus the part about who we’re going to prom with), but an equal amount of discussion time is dedicated to health. I recently found myself in the middle of a conversation about fiber. I’m only 28, when did fiber intake become a primary topic of conversation? Weddings, babies, birth control, and even hemorrhoids have come up in recent conversations. I guarantee you hemorrhoids didn’t come up in conversation at 18!

Ten years has gone by quick. In the words of my cousin when he heard it was my ten-year reunion, “Daaaaammmmmnnnnnn.” Now I have to work to support myself, from paying bills to keeping my self in mass quantities of shoes. Life isn’t quite as simple as it was at 18, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. It’s a good thing when you can look back over the past ten years, the years that probably encompass the most amount of change in a person’s life, and feel pretty good about where you’ve ended up. Even if it means talking about fiber and hemorrhoids.