Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Why High School Is Not The Best Years of Your Life

Recently David and I attended a marriage class as part of an education day put on by our local church leaders.  As the instructor (a licensed marriage and family therapist) tried to explain the differences between the male and female brain, I leaned over to David and said, "The problem is I'm not a normal girl, and you're not a normal guy."

"I am too a normal guy," he said.  "Did you DVR 'Project Runway'?"

Kidding, kidding.  He didn't actually say that.  He said, "Did you DVR 'So You Think You Can Dance'?"

For our anniversary this year he told me I was too hesitant to spend money on myself, handed me a gift card to my favorite store, and said he was going to take me shopping (because he actually likes shopping, even when it's for me).  And he did.  Then he sat on the couch in the dressing room with some guy who looked tortured to be there and watched me twirl around in dresses for like two hours.  I was really dizzy afterwards.

And I've decided that's the great thing about growing up.  Not the dizziness, of course (why on earth did we enjoy that sensation as children, anyway?), but the fact that being an adult frees you to be yourself.  We often joke about the fact that some of our best friends would have thought us total losers in high school.  I'm not making it up when I say the most spectacular move I ever performed in a P.E. class was to hit the volleyball (intending for it to go toward the net, obviously) and see it fly backwards over the top of my head and knock the clock off the wall, which fell straight into the garbage can.  I don't think it's a coincidence that I was wearing a really ugly sweater that day.

In high school I was a total failure at sports and calculus and confidence in general.  I had two left feet (and still do, but now I don't care that I do).  Nobody told me I was going a little overboard on the eyeshadow.  Seriously, why did nobody tell me I was going overboard on the eyeshadow?!  Mom, I'm looking at you.  And as long as we're discussing it, I also have questions about the years 1992-1996 and why you let me out of the house like that.  I mean, really, braces, glasses and a perm?.

But now I'm married to a guy who is not afraid to admit that he'd rather watch "Pride and Prejudice" than play baseball, doesn't care that I have two left feet, unmanicured fingernails, and a midsection that looks like I borrowed it from the Michelin Man, and says "Thank you" every time I clean off the bathroom counter.  Plus he will still use a piece of 2x4 to whack voles for me while I'm mowing the lawn.

This is way better than high school.

2 comments:

MyDonkeySix said...

Amen sister! Marshall and I have joked that we wouldn't have been friends in highschool. But now we love each other for who we are and love being ourselves!

Kris said...

My man throws parties for the season premiere of Downton Abbey.

Barry and I went through our old year books and we decided that even with his extreme geekiness he would never have noticed the disaster that was me in high school.

At least he played some kind of high school sport, even if it was tennis.

I spent most of my junior year hoping that this would be the year my mom let me shave my legs. That's right...my JUNIOR year. I also went through a HORRIBLE Latina phase. I donned every tight legged pair of jeans or crop jacket (most favorably in some form of neon or animal print) from the Spanish ward hand-me-down pile and wishing I looked like Jlo.

I am not sure what my friends were thinking when they insisted I wore my hair in a tight high pony and covered my lips in a cheap bright red drugstore lipstick. I looked like the scary hooker from a Telenovela.