Do you remember when Britney Spears was single . . . and a virgin? Or how about the time when Macaulay Culkin was just a kid trying out aftershave (instead of marijuana) for the first time?
I guess it's about time the '90s nostalgia set in. It hit me at 11:39 p.m. on a Sunday night, right after I finished the first third of my ECO 101 reading. I found out that Britney Spears got married to one of her dancers in a private ceremony in Los Angeles and all I could remember were those simpler times when the only question on people's minds was if those things were real or not.
It's funny how it all sort of snuck up on me. Now that a few weeks have passed and orientation is over, the fact that I'm going to college has perhaps finally set in. I'm an adult, I guess. Almost daily, I'm reminded of it. The presidential election this November will be the first one I'll get to vote in and may perhaps be the most important election for the next several years. I can buy a pack of cigarettes if I want to. I even got some mail the other day from the Publishers Clearing House telling me I may already be a winner of $10 million (don't worry, if I win, I'll share).
While definitely exciting, this deluge is admittedly a little intimidating. Sometimes, all I want to do is go back to being a high school kid again.
Back then, the subjects were easier, the schedule was rigid and no one ever got "hosed." If you wanted to write, you wrote. If you wanted to sing, you sang — even terribly. I think I remember people smiling more back then, too. It was nice to know you were good at something or several things or were God's gift to theater, football and Cajun-style cooking.
But something I've realized over the past week or so is that no one can be a kid forever, despite what Toys 'R' Us says. There's a big adult world out there and part of getting out in that world is to face disappointment, a steady stream of work that just won't get done and, yes, even the fact that the things you were good at in high school aren't the things you're really very good at at all. Just like Culkin can't always be the kid left home alone (even if you do still have VHS), we can't be the people we've always been. Even if in exploration we end up being hurt, barring arrest, maybe that's what college, and Princeton, is really for.
So the only thing left to do now is let down our guard, do some work and keep looking to Thursday. At least the one thing we can be sure of is our education here will last longer than Britney's marriage.
You're a lucky man Kevin Federline, enjoy it while it lasts.
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