I was on a 'getaway weekend' with some high school friends these past couple of days. I mention this because, though we were all good friends in high school, our ways parted gradually during our early twenties and our reacquaintance in middle age is fairly recent and has a lot to do with the social networking possibilities of this millennium.
I wasn't the keenest on high school or the small suburban town where I spent it. My desire to escape it was strong and I tended to look on my time there with a certain amount of disdain. But meeting up with these lovely people later in life makes me wonder what the big deal was. They are all accomplished and kind and funny. True, I never thought back on the people I knew with disdain, it was more about the 'milieu'. But what was the milieu if not the people? In retrospect, though, it was more that that part of life's journey was to define myself than anything about the place.
It occurred to me that this kind of reevaluation is something we all do from time to time. Often it is in the opposite direction, where we become disillusioned with something, but sometimes it works in this different way, which is why I include a personal example in this post.
Here's today's prompt:
Think about a situation that for one reason or another you realized you got wrong in a major way. (If you're perfect, and have never had this experience, ask around among your merely mortal friends and you're sure to find an example.) Write a story about the process of that change of heart. Or extrapolate and give it to someone who is not like you at all.
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