Pushing Send

I did it. I sent a friend request to my high school best friend I haven't talked to in...? A decade? I looked up some of the other "kids" yesterday. The boy I crushed on & off for years, who I kissed beneath the giant tree in his back yard during a ritualized make-out party before 7th grade... has an incurable brain disease which affects his balance and he's making a film about how surfing helps. The girl I idolized still looks fab in a recent pic with her high school sweetheart handsome surfer dude. Yes, I grew up in a beach town, adding to my teen angst as I ducked in the face of the oncoming volleyball. But we also had a fantastic bookstore two blocks from the beach, with a whole 6-sided room for poetry, so that saved me.
Along with those tacoburritos that we used to scarf down at the pier.

Do teenagers still care about their "reputations?"

I'm trying to only write once a day but I have something exciting to report. And you know I'm not very good at holding myself back. Reading my teen diaries and looking for the story has got me thinking about my old friends: The one I abandoned after junior high because I decided she was too weird, even though she was kind enough (& weird enough) to befriend me when all my elementary school friends dropped me on the first day for wearing the wrong outfit. But after two years of conspicuous weirdness, I was going to try and be normal so I could improve my reputation in high school.  And then there's the friend  who, in 9th grade,  took me under her smart, funny, and adventurous wing, to help me wreck my reputation in a whole new way.  I've had no contact with my junior high friend in 40 years, and haven't talked to my high school friend for more than a decade! I just found them both on facebook and am filled with a flutter of feelings. I haven't pushed the friend request button yet though. I wanted to tell you first.