Like Yesterday

Ten years and a few months ago, I graduated from Whitman College.  Tomorrow, I’m going back for my ten-year reunion.

 

After exchanging a few emails with friends about what to wear to the various events, I realized a few things.

 

First, that I will be dressed better than this, no matter what I wear:

 

In the TriDelta chapter room, post donkey-stealing (no, alcohol was totally not allowed in the chapter room)

 

Chunky black boots, tube tops… we are ready to party.

Secondly, I am unlikely to engage in many of the crazy behaviors that characterized my life back then:

 

  

Body shots.  Because college.

But lastly, truthfully, I realized that I haven’t changed much.  I sort of expected to, you know?  I think I am more humble (if I do say so myself, tut tut), less quick to anger or become defensive, and more compassionate and empathetic now than when I was in college, but I’m still me.  I still want to go to alcohol-fueled parties all night long and do body shots, it’s just that I don’t have that kind of cleavage anymore and I really don’t want anyone but Tony to be doing the body shots and also I get really hungover now, so on second thought, I don’t want to do that anymore.  Okay, bad example.  But the truth in the statement is still there.  I am still me.  Just ten years older and wiser.  I’m a bit thinner, my hair is longer, I don’t wear big, black belts with all my jeans or babydoll t-shirts, but I am fundamentally me.

 

And that means, to my everlasting joy, that the people I will see again, for the first time in ten years, are also likely to still be the same people.  Maybe a bit more mellow, a bit more gracious, a bit less 22-years-old.  To our benefit, I think.  I like me now.  I’m prepared to really enjoy and appreciate my classmates now, more so than I did in 2003.