Reflections on Being 18.

Since today is my last day, and I seem to really enjoy making bulleted lists, here is this, in no sense of order whatsoever:


Things I Did:

• Graduated high school.
• Attending my first year of college.
• Got my license.
• Broke up with my girlfriend of 10 months.
• Learned how to drink responsibly.
• Lost my virginity.
• Asked a girl for her number (the first time ever).
• Broke the law a bunch of times.
• Kissed a man onstage.
• Bought a ukelele.
• Got mononucleosis.
• Discovered Achewood.
• Adventured a lot.
• Saw Apollo Sunshine in concert many times.
• Saw Against Me! with Murder By Death in concert.
• Stole bowling shoes.
• Learned how to manage my finances some.
• Read lots of good books.
• Saw lots of good movies.
• Learned a lot about other people.
• Learned a lot about my Self.

Things I Didn't Do:

• Vote in the election (I had mono and it didn't matter).
  
• Reach Nirvana.
• Get better at guitar.
• Watch much TV.
• Backflips, of any kind.
• Impress women.
• Taxes.

Stuff That Happened:

• I rolled my stepfather's truck over the same day he married my mother, two hours after they left for their honeymoon. The truck was absolutely totalled, I was physically fine. Mentally, it took me a while to recover.
• I had an epiphany of sorts sitting in a mobile home in a trailer park in the middle of the night, the only one left awake after a party, and I was drinking rum & coke but not drunk.
• Had another moment: standing barefoot on top of a roof of my friend Ian's apartment building staring out into the foggy Portland lights and it was raining and I was drinking some and talking with people I respected about everything and nothing.
• Was in the play Lysistrata, by Aristophanes, as the Male Slave, got to wear a phallus and imply that I was having sex with the Female Slave backstage. Was later in a 10-minute play How Not to Tell Your Best Friend You Slept With His Wife, by Jake Christie, as the man telling his best friend he slept with his wife in all the wrong ways, as in, really vulgar straightforward hilarious ways.
• Made some really great friends in the Theater Department and some even better ones just in my building. Expanded my social horizons. Liked my roomates my first semester, didn't my second. Grew even closer to my friends from high school. Met a whole range of people from all sorts of backgrounds and cultures and learned some things about diversity, individuality and human beings in general. Became less socially introverted and felt more comfortable meeting new people.
  
• I started writing again and becoming less self-concious about it.
• I started thinking about life differently. Accepting others for who they were. I got a lot less judgemental. I saw my life for how it is, but didn't transcend it and reach some sort of higher state of being or anything, just sort of accepted it. Nothing has really changed about me, but I'm definitely a different person than I was the year before this. And, hopefully, I'll be a different person next year.

Ultimately, I:

• Grew up.