When I was in high school and college, I was one of the Good Girls. Never smoked, never drank, certainly never touched the "other stuff" that the other kids were into. Smelled pot, but only in the bathrooms. Had no idea what acid or mushrooms or cocaine even looked like, let alone felt like. I left that stuff to the Bad Girls. And I tried to never associate with them, because I was very concerned about studies and grades and what my honors teachers would think and what my honors peers would think. My schools were hotbeds for all the bad stuff, so needless to say I was in the extreme minority. And oh my goodness, didn't all that stuff kill brain cells and cause permanent damage?
Now looking back on it - I did the right thing at the right time - I suppose.
And now that I'm grown up with a grown-up Honors life and grown-up Honors children and we're all trying to make the right grown-up Honors choices, I sort of wish I had steered off the path at least once. I'm not talking about being a full fledged Bad Girl, but maybe once in a while doing a Bad Girl thing. Like smoking in the girls' room. Or trying pot. Or at least befriending one of the Bad Girls. After all, they could not have been all that bad all the time. They just did not make the same choices as I did, and vice versa. And whose to say that I made all the right choices? Being Good was good, but it was also boring. And maybe I would have been a good friend to a Bad Girl. Who knows?
In the meantime, I'd love to try some pot.
1 comment:
Purple Queen:
Good, Bad, Ugly... we all have regrets about what we should have been (always the opposite of what we were). Ultimately, I think we are confronted by the wisdom of seeing we did the best wherever we were - the only regret is not having a greater perspective. Like seeing ourselves from above at all times and all the people in the wings on the periphery of our vision doing whatever they were doing that we didn't see at the time. I guess that's what God does, we just want to do that too.
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