I was in the East Bay area of San Francisco last weekend. I used to live there many years ago. I stayed with my friend Sandra who I've known since those golden days of Valley View Middle School and College Park High School. Count me as lucky when it comes to long term friends; Sandra is certainly someone I want in my life..well...for the rest of it.
We drove through the rolling hills and reminisced about the memories we had of 1975 and 1976. Those rolling hills jogged my memory of a cute guy in my Spanish class in 8th grade. Actually, he was more than cute. He was a cool, bad boy with a head of curly shoulder length hair. He wore black platform shoes with his Levis. He always smelled of weed.
He sat behind me. Me...a shy, timid, very unselfassured girl afraid of life and intimated by a law enforcement father at home. Several times a week he would ask me to go up those hills, with him, to get stoned. I really wanted to go with him up those hills. Not necesarily to get stoned because I was a "good" girl and "good" girls didn't do that but because I had a huge crush on him. But, I continually turned him down.
Driving through those rolling hills last weekend I wondered...would anything about my life be different had I done what I really wanted to do? Would it have hurt to venture up there and smoke some weed with a cool, bad boy, and, the possibility that I could also sneak in a make-out session? Or, would I have become a "bad" girl and earned the wrath of that law enforcement father?
I don't know that I would have changed. Or, that two kids temporarily acting out of hormonal driven 8th grade desire would have set the planet on a wonky plane. I don't think it matters. But it is one regret that I have. I should have done it because I wanted to and this is one life that is entirely mine. Sad that it took me all these years to realize this.