High school never ends

Rereading my last post, wherein I lamented the return of my chronic shyness, has lead me to reflect on a time when it was at its peak: my teen years.  Why would I want to do that in a blog about the horrors of dating past thirty?  Allow me to explain.  Adolescence is like a glorious sort of limbo; you're not a kid anymore, but you're not a grown up.  You can do all the fun things like date, party, eat crappy food and drink without having to worry about kids, work, rent/mortgage, bills, etc.  Then when you hit adulthood and take on all the responsibilities that come with it, you can always look back fondly on that time and know that you didn't miss out on anything.  But not everybody has that luxury.  Some people, and this is purely a hypothesis, you understand, spent their teens hiding from the tough kids in the library, writing poetry about one of the hundreds of boys their hormone addled heart was fixated on and cursing the fact that they won their dad's nose and jaw in the genetic lottery.  Anyone who inhaled sharply at this (purely hypothetical) account of adolescence will probably be familiar with the following scenario. 

Say you're a single woman in her mid to late thirties.  Your love life has hit a slump, as has your social life, and you find yourself transported back to a time you thought dead and buried, wondering whether things would be better now had you done something differently then.  Maybe that guy in seventh grade whose timetable you memorised just so you'd be able to bump into him would have liked you if you'd been 'normal.'  Maybe if you'd tried to make yourself look prettier, he would have asked you out.  Then you would have had your first kiss a lot earlier, and probably dated a few more boys before graduation, which would have made you a bit more streetwise when it came to choosing guys post high school.  Maybe then you wouldn't have fallen for the wrong guy, had your heart broken, and ended up alone at a time when it's statistically less likely for you to find love.  The solution to this problem is to remember that high school was twenty plus years ago, and that time and Karma make excellent bedfellows.  The hot bad boy you drooled over when you were fourteen?  Years of smoking and sunbathing have probably left him looking like an imitation leather purse from South East Asia, which is where the hot girl he married has to visit him while he does time for drug trafficking.  The Thor lookalike with the biceps that could crack walnuts?  Decades of throwing parties you were never invited to have undoubtedly given him a beer belly that could double as an end table.  The cool guy with girls dripping off him like diamonds, who held you in the same esteem as dog leavings?  It's hard to woo women when child support takes three quarters of your income.  The past is a great place for a vacation.  Visit the old haunts, marvel at how different they look now that you're an inch or two taller and a great deal wiser; but if you stay too long, you'll never leave, and fun as The Breakfast Club is to watch, who wants to be stuck in eternal detention with those arseholes?