Reconnected

Thanks to the wonders of technology, namely Facebook, I am now friends (again)with a bunch of my grade school classmates. We've gotten together now three times in the past year or so. Last January, last March for St. Patty's Day and now this past January.

I remember being nervous the first time all saw each other again. Part of it is that so much time has passed and you feel like a different person. Frankly, I wasn't all that popular in grade school. I was strange. I liked comic books and fashion magazines. I liked the band Lone Justice because I'd seen them on a New Year's Eve show on MTV. I thought that made me cool and alternative. I was skinny with buck teeth, a lisp and a matching green tank top and short outfit by Generra that I wore on free dress days. I felt like a planet that hadn't been discovered yet. No name and barely there.

I think what I'm discovering in some ways now is that a bunch of us felt that way. And we've taken our adulthood by the balls and transformed those feelings of isolation into something else. It's made some of us more reflective. It's made a bunch of us let go. My best friend Alanna (who I didn't go to grade school with) and I are always found of saying, "We're just two kids from Downey." I think part of my identity will always be tied to being right off the 5 and the 605 freeways.

What I found when we saw each other again for the first time in that small group of about ten of us, was that time had made us laugh at everything. And yes there were some revelations - secret crushes and the like - but the real revelation was how quickly we all became 14 again - in the best possible way. We fell into our rhythms again.

I'm not sure why I'm thinking about that today. Maybe it's because I look at my Facebook and I see Niki's new recipe or Judy's funny TGIF comment or the fact that we're all planning to see each other again when Michelle comes to town. It's just nice to know that everyone's okay, I guess. Yeah, it's really nice to know that everyone's okay.