If I Could Turn Back Time

BFF C and I have been enjoying a time travel theme lately. It started with books and now it's branched out to television. On SOAPnet, there is a new drama called Being Erica.

Erica is in her 30's and her life sucks. She feels it all started to go downhill in high school. So her "therapist" sends her back to fix what she thinks went wrong. Of course, she fixes it just to have something else go wrong.

The theme of the books I've recently read are similar. The characters gets a chance to revisit her past, all with varying results.

Now with all the 25 Random Things About Me, "Firsts" and other getting-to-know/remembering-you pass-alongs, I've been asked numerous times in the past month if I would go back to high school again.


Okay, so this is what I have been thinking: Yes, I would go back to high school. A) I had a good time, when I was actually there. and b) I would make changes starting at oh, seventeen.

I've mentioned before that I would let some friendships go and work harder on others. It would be nice to have friends who kept in touch. I think I would kick two friends to the curb, knowing what I know now. The friendships, while fun and important, were unhealthy in the long run. Also, I think I would pay more attention to others. I had broad scope of people I knew and a few close friends. I think a better balance could have been made.


I think I would try harder in school or perhaps even have switched schools. I was such a ridiculous underachiever in high school. In fact, during my senior year I visited a neighboring high school and loved it. The classes were better, there were no preconceived notions of me so the kids seemed nicer. I went to an English Comp/Lit class regularly there even though I wasn't an enrolled student.

However, I would have fear of altering anything in the past that would affect the future. I think I would be frantic to not change anything while I was in the past.

But I am fascinated to hear stories about that time period, to browse through my high school yearbooks & pictures. I have forgotten many things and I think it would be fun, not necessarily to re-experience them but to be in the midst of the excitement of being a teen again.



I have friends who loved high school and I have friends who hated high school. It's amazing to me how so many humans can be put into the same building, with the same people and the essentially same experiences (perhaps milestones might be a better word) and yet come out so incredibly different.

C will describe something to me sometimes and I am astonished. How she perceived the situation was completely different than I had. Often, neither of us are "right" or "wrong." Well, that's not true: sometimes I was definitely in the wrong. It's all a matter of perception. So, I think it would be interesting to see high school through a different filter.

Just seeing high school through an adult filter via the 10th & 20th reunions was an experience. It certainly changed my perspective about myself, my friends, and how we all related. Certainly, there were still cliques and old behaviors but for the most part, we were all clinging to a metaphorical life raft, having all experienced high school together.

I think it's doubly important for someone who didn't have a good high school experience (ahem, C?) to go to reunion. I think it would be tremendously difficult to do but I think the benefit of a new perspective would outweigh any negative.

I find myself much like I was in high school. Blogging has become homework. As I write this, I have my feet on the desk, the CD player playing & the television on in the background. I have chores to do and I'm ignoring them. I still wear Levis & sneakers. As much as some things change, others never do. I guess that I could be considered lucky that I'm still similar to the kid I was then.

It is an interesting thing to think about, really. Would you go back to high school? What would you do differently?