Reunions, Regrets and Apologies

I went home a little over a week ago for a reunion. My high school youth ministry was getting together after too many years apart. It was awesome to see everyone, to reconnect and reminisce, but every once in a while the reminiscing got a little awkward.

Like when an old friend told me that I stole her boyfriend on the bus on the way to camp in 8th grade. I hung my head in shame and embarrassment as she described what happened, and then I apologized profusely. Though, in all honesty, I don't remember knowing that he had a girlfriend, but I do remember dating him, and regretting it. I'm pretty sure that I had done her a favor.

Then on Saturday, my friend told me that after I left on Friday night, a guy came up to her and said that he had taken me out on a date once in high school. But he never came up to me. When I arrived at the reunion on Saturday I walked past a row of people and distinctly heard someone say, "Hi Leah." But when I turned to say hi, no one was looking at me and I didn't recognize anyone, so I kept walking. Later my friend pointed out that this was the guy that I had gone on that date with, the one that said hi without looking at me. Weird.

I ran into other guys there. The first boy that I kissed, there on the back stairs of the church, when my knees almost give out. Yeah, that guy was there, but I couldn't bring myself to say hi to him either. No matter how many years have gone by, or that we're both married now and each have our own families. He's supposed to stay part-imaginary, so I'm gonna leave him that way.

There was the guy that had fixed me this really nice dinner and I had talked about my ex-boyfriend the whole time because I didn't realize he wanted to be more than friends and this was supposed to be a romantic dinner. He was there, too.

See, I was not overly confident in high school (this is one of my excuses for being a serial dater). There were people in my life that liked to point out my flaws - everything from my big forehead and over sized lips, to my broad shoulders and big rib cage. A good portion of my life I felt like a walking freak show, the way some people described me. So if a guy asked me to go to a movie, to get brunch with him after church, or to a dance, I assumed that they just wanted to hang out as friends. Unless they spelled out that this was a date and they liked me, I tended to remain pretty clueless.

Unfortunately this resulted in me getting myself into trouble, like when one guy, who had taken me to an arena football game called me out and said he knew I was going out with another guy after church on Sunday. I looked at him dumbstruck, he looked at me like I'd been caught in a lie, finally understanding began to sink in. Oooh, they both viewed these hangout times as dates! I'm a little slow on the uptake sometimes.

I like to blame my family for this.:) See, dad didn't live with me, so he had no idea how many guys I was hanging out with alone on an almost daily basis. If he had, he might have clued me in to what the majority of these guys had in mind. Secondly, my mom was a nun. Not when I was born, but the woman was in a convent through all of her high school years. She didn't have a lot of life lessons to teach me in the area of dating - not to mention the two jobs she worked however many hours a week.

My brother did try to help. He told me once I was going to get date raped if I wasn't careful. This scared me, and made me want to be careful, but if you don't think anyone is actually attracted to you, then why would they want to do that (naive little girl that I was)? Now, there were random guys that I would crush on and one in particular must have been very bad, because my big football player brother told me that if I ever mentioned his name again he would kill me and him. I got the message that time.

But here is the real purpose of this blog - confession. I have carried regret and guilt over the ridiculous way that I dated boys throughout high school for years. I used to think that God was just being good to me in bringing Joel into my life when I was only 18 years old, but now I think it was also to relieve the surrounding male population. They could all breathe a sigh of relief that I was no longer around to misinterpret their advances, lead them on unknowingly or date them only to break up a few days later.

So here is my apology. I am sorry, boys. I am sorry to all the Mike's and Chris's and Jason's, to the Matt's and Dave's and Gary's, to all the ones that I don't remember, and especially to Brian. I am sorry for being a confused, naive and flirtatious teenager. I really didn't mean any harm. I hope you can forgive me.

There. Years of guilt all out on the page. Now I can finish my 15th year of marriage in peace.:)