I remember

I remember being innocent and carefree. Sports consumed my life. WWF figurines, the American Gladiators television show, recreation-league soccer: These were the things I obsessed over. And I'll admit it, I was a bit of a Pokemon fanatic at one point.

As I entered my teenage years, I used to look at homemade videos from my childhood. These tapes made my guts wrench on the inside, and I distinctly remember trying to hold back tears as I watched myself doing the silly activities that young boys do. I was the weatherman in my older brother's homemade video newscasts. I assassinated my brother, the president of the United States, in another video. Who was that boy I saw on those tapes?

He certainly is not me. I mean, he was me at one point, but things have changed. It's not that I want to go back in time and relive these moments, but I do miss them. I miss the feelings I had. There were no worries. I could listen non-stop to Chumbawamba, a lame British band from the late '90s that put out a hit song about debauchery. Not that I knew what the lyrics meant, but I didn't care. Did it matter anyway?

Sometimes I ask myself why I miss the younger me so much. I did not know my parents were diabetic back then, so there must be an element of fear instilled in me now. I did not think about death back then. After getting the phone call last year informing me that one of my best friends had died in a car accident, I think about death all the time now. After a near-death accident of my own merely a month later, I spiraled into a deep sadness. I can see the bad in the world now.

I feel like we are two different people. The younger me did not fight with his parents. He thought girls had cooties. Perhaps he was a fool for some of his passions, but he was a lovable fool at the very worst. His family was a lot closer, before his uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents moved away and his brother went to college.

I'm not upset with the way things turned out. I thrived at a competitive high school, earning a major award my junior year. I led several extracurriculars and was a three-sport athlete. I took on the toughest of all sports - wrestling - and captained my team to a successful finish my senior year. I inspired people. My former teammates wanted me to talk to them before one of their recent matches. And I got into Princeton.

But I still envy that little boy. His life was not as complex as mine is. He did not bury any friends. He had no survivor's guilt. Nor did he know the travails of high school and college. He definitely had no idea about the feeling of solitude after a failed relationship and the many tears that go with it.

Sometimes I used to look in the mirror and imagine the future me. I modeled myself after the older boys I knew or saw on TV. I wore a backwards cap. I had a pretty muscular body. I was pretty tall. I was a heck of an athlete, and my personality was probably the same as it used to be - the kind of innocent bliss I cherish. And the girls would be infatuated with me. I could not wait to grow up and become that person.

Some of those things actually came true, others only to an extent and yet others not at all. When I look at myself in the mirror now, it is hard for me to tell if I became that person since I have a different perception of life. I sure hope I did him proud, though. I know that that little boy used to look in the mirror and idolize me. But I wonder if there is some way to tell him that I look in the mirror now and idolize him even more.

Jeff Kirchick is a sophomore from Boston, Mass. He can be reached at kirchick@princeton.edu.