Now that I have a bike, I can tour my home town at ease and take a few pictures of the places and things that mean something to me. Above is Saint Raphael Academy I attended a long while back and talk about fairly often on here. It looks wonderful now but back then it was a bit shabbier.

Since I was there, the school has managed to amass fat alumni donations to redo it's entire campus and add a few buildings. When I graduated, the entire school may have held 500 students, that's including all from freshmen to seniors. If you compare that to Saint's football adversary, Tolman High School, it had an enrollment of about 1,300 easy.

We were small, yes.

There are many times I drive by the school in order to get to Route 95. When I pass it, I often see the kids walking between classes and I'm amazed at how young they are. Hell, some look like they're twelve. I then have to realize kids in this school will always be 14-18 in age no matter what. I'm the one that's getting older! Did I look that young at one time? Was I that skinny (yes I was, painfully so!). Can I go back? (Nope, the teen world forever bars anyone from re-entering).

Cue the line from Neil Young's song, “You can't be 20...on Sugar Mountain.”

Do I miss it? Well, the problem with nostalgia is that you tend to focus on the good and forget all the rotten times that did exist then. I miss the youth. I miss that excitement at discovering things I never knew about or did. I miss the natural enthusiasm you have when young.

I don't miss the silly teen conformity. I don't miss the Vesuvius type zits I once had. I really don't miss that insane teen need to “belong.” And with that, the perfect weapon other teens use against their own by wholly ignoring you and declaring you “outcast.”

It would be a something to step into a time machine and see yourself, the people you knew back then. Even if you could only observe and not give frantic warnings to those you knew or even yourself, about decisions that weren't going to work out well. Hell, if you could warn yourself or others, none would believe you. And sprinkled in there, are those small, wonderful choices that you made, that made all the difference!

(Listening to van Morrison as I write this...cool tunes!)