I'm glad I'm not a teenager anymore

When I think of my teen years, there is a lot of blankness.  I don't seem to remember too much.  Perhaps, I'm blocking a lot of it out.  Perhaps, I am not remembering a lot because I was a pretty boring kid.  I didn't have a lot of friends that I hung out with outside of school.  We were real cool in school, and even hung out some weekends, but for the most part, my seriously early curfew kept me from being able to go out with people.

When I think of my teen years, I think of how any of the people I was in school with can even remember me and find me on social networking sites or recognize me as the friend of their older sibling when I go out to eat in my home town.  I think of how it is possible that teachers I had in HS remember me to this day and ask about me when I see them or find them on FB.  How can they remember me when I seemed so unremarkable?  Yeah, I had athletic prowess, yeah, I was smart, yeah, I was friends with some people that were deemed cool, or deemed weirdos, but I was hardly ever in the Commons hanging out with people.  I lived in an area of the district where no one who looked like me lived and where there were hardly any young people.

How do they remember me?

I try and help the teens I work with as an educator feel more comfortable with themselves.  I try and get them to realize that this is not the main part of their lives.  I try and get them to understand that even if they don't have a large group of peers that they can relate to, there are over 7 billion people in the world and after they leave HS they can go out and find more people who are like them.

When I think back to my teen years, I wish I had done more, I wish I had lived more.  I wish I had defied my parents' super early curfew.  I wish I had stayed friends with many people after high school was finished.  I wish I had befriended some of the people I thought were interesting, but were not deemed 'cool'.

But I am very glad those years are over and that I am more comfortable with myself.

Now, when people remember me from my 20s on up, I can understand why.

Now, I am not just sitting back.

This was another Stream of Consciousness Sunday post with the prompt, "What happens when you are reminded of your teen years?  Happy?  Jealous?  Feelings of bitterness or regret?

All I did was write down whatever came to my mind for 5 minutes and then post my link with the other participants on Fadra's site.  You can join in or read the other participants' posts.