Anyone who knows me knows that I take after my dad in my tendency to look backward and not forward at life. Sentimentality, he would call it. Because of this, I value ROOTS.
Roots: Cherishing relationships with people who knew you way back when, whose very presence in my life at that time helped me (or maybe didn't help) me become who I am as an adult.
Facebook is great for finding your roots. I recently made a connection with someone on Facebook that I am so excited about. It's someone I met at Badger State the summer before my senior year.
Badger State, you ask? Yes, yet another peek at my geeky adolesence, thank you very much.
Badger Girls State is a one-week camp put on by the American Legion. During this week, two girls from select high schools around the state get to experience what American government is like. We create caucuses, make legislation, elect representatives, create a senate, and because we were all young and idealistic created two party platforms that were basically the same party platform. (Because who wanted to be Republican when you're 16?)
I and one of my classmates were chosen by our local American Legion to take part in this camp. I knew no one who was a member of the American Legion, not quite sure how I got selected to be honest, but totally took the opportunity to go. As it was, they made sure that classmates from the same school were always split up so this girl and I didn't see each other the entire week, until we met at her dad's car at the end of the week for the ride home. (Which was fine w/me, because we weren't actually friends.)
What this afforded me was a freedom I haven't known in my life so far. Not from parents but from peer expectations. Here were girls who didn't know me. At all. No pre-conceived notions. I'd known my classmates since the 6th grade. We moved around a lot previous to landing there, so by the time I got there it took me probably 2 years to feel comfortable enough to feel like I had real friends. And once I felt like I had friends, I think I felt like I had to be careful around them to keep them, that they wouldn't really like me if they got to know the real me.
Now I could be and do anyone I wanted to be, and there were no lasting implications. I would know these girls for a week and if they all hated me at the end of the week, it wouldn't make any difference. The person who got exposed to this the most was my roommate, Anita. I killed her our second day together after all, and make a masking tape outline of her on our floor. We then carried her "body" in a sheet and put it in the elevator, then pushed all the buttons so it made a tour of the floors. I then picked a girl from a different floor who wanted to go to law school to represent me because, shockingly, in a week long experiment of American government justice would have to be served. The last full day of the camp I was put on trial for the murder, and I believe I was found guilty but handed a suspended sentence since we were leaving the next day.
We were staying in a dorm that had no air conditioning and it got so hot one night that neither of us could sleep, so we left the door open of our mini fridge to try to cool down the room. It worked if you sat right in front of it. And I think it iced over inside and we had to turn it off because the motor on it started making funny sounds.
We were quirky, crazy, avant garde, energetic and confident in all the things we took on. Yet we didn't actually break any real rules. We did proceed to have a time of our lives, no matter or more like in spite of what others thought.
After that crazy fun week we exchanged addresses and phone numbers (because we didn't have IM ID's, cell phone #'s or email addresses back then) and probably wrote each other for a while, but eventually lost touch.
Until last week.
I can't believe that Anita remembered my name and looked me up. I honestly had forgotten her last name, but she remembered mine. And it was incredible to hear how much that week impacted her life, how she values fearlessness, art, and is probably the silliest and coolest mom to her three girls.
It really wasn't until she reached out to me that I remembered how different I was that week, and how when I returned to school for my senior year I was more confident in who I was, more myself and less concerned about other people's impressions.
While I don't remember much more about American government than the average American (okay, maybe a little more), I have to say I learned a lot about myself that week, and about deep, lasting friendships.
I'm so glad Anita looked me up. I'm sure we'll be seeing each other within the year, even though we're in different states.
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