7 things, the high school edition

There's this meme floating about wherein bloggers admit 7 things about who they were when they were younger.  Y'all, this is terrible.  I have very few photos of myself at that time on my computer; they are all in a box at my parent's house with the words "TO BURN" on them.  You'll see why:

1. I was emo, aka, Took Myself Extraordinarily Seriously.  This pretty  much sums everything up.  Think Dashboard Confessional and Death Cab for Cutie.  Think journaling.  Think dark eye make-up.  Yes.  It's true.

2. Not unrelatedly, I was hugely into music.  I listened to music all the damn time.  If I could've listened to music in class and during family dinner, believe you me I would've.  My all-time favorites were Brand New, Modest Mouse, Counting Crows, Rilo Kiley, and Radiohead.  In fact, I went to a Radiohead concert in 2003 and I remembering thinking to myself afterward "THIS IS THE ONLY MUSIC THAT MATTERS."  (Remember the whole taking myself very seriously thing? I wasn't joking.)  My only consolation is that Radiohead is still my favorite band; so much so, in fact, that in 2008 I got a Radiohead tattoo on my left tricep.

The image is from the cover of Amnesiac.  Here's hoping they're still my favorite in 50 years!

3. I had nearly crippling anxiety during my adolescence.  It was assuaged mostly with drinking and my journal.  Not a diary, ok?  Like, what am I, seven?  I still have the journal and I read it occasionally.  It's definitely good for an eye-roll and every so often serves to remind me how far I've come.

4. Ah, drinking.  I was somewhat of a party girl in high school.  I went on a (very unsupervised) school-sponsored trip to Europe between my sophomore and junior year.  Well it turns out that in 2003, Europe was very lax about their drinking laws and needless to say, we were kids in the proverbial candy store.  During one particularly unsupervised night in France, the 20 or so of us on the trip managed to trash a hotel room.  I won't go into details, but let's just say we owed several thousand dollars in reparations.  There is enough video footage of that night to bar me and any close relatives from ever running for a public office.

5. Most of my close friends were guys.  I had such a terribly shitty middle school experience (hello, who doesn't?) that by the time I hit 9th grade, I was done with girls forever.  I'm still very close with most of them, a few even live in Austin.  I lifted my ban on girl friendships in college once I was sufficiently healed.  The fact that like 80% of the college I went to as a freshman were women also helped.

6. I spent every single summer of my adolescence at a Jewish summer camp in central Texas.  It was my favorite place in the entire world and I can't remember a happier time in my life than when I was at camp.  I had two serious boyfriends and two best friends come from that place.  Look, here's a picture of me dancing at camp!

Girl needed some bangs and an anti-frizz conditioner, for real.

7. I was very idealistic as a teenager.  Despite the emo-ness and the anxiety, I had real hope for the future and wanted to impact real change.  I spent freshman year of college at American University in Washington, D.C.  I wanted to be a ambassador to Israel.  It took me about two weeks to be fully indoctrinated into the Cynical Lifestyle and about the same amount of time to realize I needed to look for another alma mater.  This is me with my dad on my first day of college, still so excited! 

Frizzy hair like whoa.  Also, why am I wearing pajamas on the first day of college?!

So there you have it.  I was mostly insufferable to be around, but I think I'm better now.