It Seems Like a Lifetime Ago

I often get nostalgic at this time of year. The last musical that I was in took place in January of my senior year of high school. I was also in pep band, so for two or three weeks straight, when I wasn't at performances or rehearsals, I was playing my clarinet at a basketball game.

There's one night in particular stamped in my memory. After that night's basketball game, Best Friend Boy, Etch-a-Sketch, and I went to a Wendy's. Some other band members were there, including Runner Bean. (This was shortly after this disaster.)

There's a picture of us on my bedroom bookshelf from that night—Etch-a-Sketch and I on one side of the table, Best Friend Boy on the other. Our food is pictured too: Best Friend Boy bites into a sandwich; Etch-a-Sketch puts a chicken nugget in her mouth. The sandwich that Best Friend Boy kindly purchased for me sits unwrapped before me.

Runner Bean isn't pictured, but he was the focus of my evening. I remember how that one of the girls in our grade sat next to him. She was chatting at him...stealing his fries...at one point, she even ran her fingers through his hair. I remember how I felt then. What was an otherwise great evening soured, and a sick feeling condensed into a deadweight ball sitting in the middle of my stomach.

I wasn't that girl. I wasn't the fun, flirty girl who stole fries and ran her fingers through a boy's hair. I was too earnest and too intense for that. No guy I knew ever said that the thing they hoped most for in a girl was earnestness and intensity. Thus I quickly became discouraged not just about Runner Bean, but about all of my future romantic possibilities...or rather, what I feared was the lack thereof.

Yes, I know, it seems a silly thing to let one evening cause me to question the nature of my entire existence. But like I said...intensity.

The next day, as I changed into my costume and put on my makeup for that night's performance, I found that I had an unsolicited text from Best Friend Boy.

Best Friend Boy: I'm sorry Runner Bean is liked by so many girls. But he's liked for very good reasons and that is why I think he may be worthy of a daughter of [God] such as you.

That text left a deep impression on me...as you can probably tell due to the fact that I recall it at all. So much has happened since then that it feels like it happened to someone else, and I merely heard about it from a friend or read about it online somewhere. However, if my sporadic records of text messages I received in high school are to be trusted, it really did happen.

It's strange how you simply can't forget some small, seemingly insignificant things, isn't it?