If high school was now...

I read yesterday that the CEO of Foursquare is an NYU grad (my undergrad alma mater).  I'm always happy to see NYU grads in the news (which happens often) but I have to admit that I had mixed feelings about this one because I don't really "get" Foursquare.  Okay, you announce where you are and earn points and become the Mayor McCheese of Starbucks or something?

In thinking about this yesterday, I said off-handedly to the hubby, "But, man, if Foursquare was around when I was in high school?  I would have been watching it constantly.  Because I had nothing better to do."

It's true.  I was a very sad high school student, both literally and figuratively.  I was that kid listening to Morrissey and The Cure, looking out her bedroom blinds, trying to see which particular popular kids were showing up for the pool party across the street.  A trio of popular siblings lived across the street, providing me hours upon hours of jealous spying time.  We're now friends on Facebook, even though I still can't think of anything I like about them and wouldn't recognize them if I saw them in person.  But isn't that what Facebook is about?

Speaking of Facebook, I would have friended everyone I went to high school with and then spent hours upon hours looking at their profile pages, seeing who commented what to whom, who was dating whom, who broke up, who posted what pictures.  I quite possibly might not have made the honor roll or the National Honor Society because I would have spent all my after school time online.  I may not have become an English major because I may not have spent my spare time reading. (Now there's a scary thought.)  I would have been obsessed with Facebook stalking.  Instead of standing in the hall at school with my friend Sarah, trying to eavesdrop and spy on the popular kids, desperately trying to figure out what was going on in their lives, we would have gone home after school and spent hours on Facebook.

And I would have had a blog.  Oh, yes, I would have had the type of blog that would make me cringe as an adult, kind of like my journals from the time do - except they would've been public.  I would've written about how much I hated high school and how much I hated life.  I would have wondered obsessively about when I'd have my first boyfriend and when I'd fall in love and whether I'd ever get married.  My words would have displayed for all the world to see just how socially awkward and unaware I was, just how little I really knew about why and how boys and girls got together. 

I would've written thinly veiled descriptions of who I hated and why.  I would have written more strongly veiled descriptions of who I had a crush on and why.  I may have logged all the minute details of their day, much like I did in notes with Sarah.

I would have posted terrible poetry.  Terrible, terrible poetry - but words that helped me express what I felt so painfully inside.

I would have made people worry about me.  I used to write suicide notes, not because I actually planned to kill myself, but I found it comforting to think through what I would want to say if I knew I was never going to talk to anyone ever again.  I would try to figure out what I could write so my family wouldn't feel any guilt.  I would try to figure out what I could write so people at school knew just how miserable they made me.  But I would never write any of this with any true intention behind it.

I wonder if I would have been bullied online, like I was at school.  What would be the 2010 equivalent of tacks on my chair and spitballs in my hair?  Would people write rude things on my Facebook wall and then delete them, just so I'd see them and then there'd be no proof?  Or would they write rude things and then leave them, so I'd be openly embarrassed?  Or would I have come out of high school with more friends because I would have unintentionally opened myself up to more of my fellow students, instead of coming across as stuck up or shy?

And would I have found Fatshionista type sites and communities, where I may have learned to love not just my body, but myself, years and years (and years) ahead of when I actually would?  Where I would have learned the dangers of dieting?  Where I may have learned about intuitive eating early enough to make significant changes to my relationship with food, possibly preventing me from having gastric bypass surgery at 28?

I really don't know what I'd be like now, as a person, if I'd had the internet in high school.  I suspect that I truly might be someone different and possibly may have had a different life, one I would feel just as right in as I do in the one I have now.  I know you're supposed to say you wouldn't change a thing because your past made you who you are now, but I don't have a problem seeing myself with a different job, or living in a different state, or even having a different husband.  The only exception is Nate.  I simply cannot imagine myself with a different child and I can't imagine having had him at a different time, a different age.  So then I suppose I really wouldn't change a thing if this all led me to him.

This post is an entry for the Living Out Loud project.  This month’s theme was “Back to school”.  If you’d like to take part in future projects, click here!