And they all come tumbling down...

Icons from my childhood seem to be dropping like flies this summer. It started with David Carradine. I really liked him. When I was a kid, I watched endless hours of Kung Fu on TV. I was genuinely happy he was enjoying a comeback in his career. Now Farrah, Ed, and Michael.

My karate demo team is doing a tribute to the 80s for our competition this summer in Vegas. Ironically, we had just finished a karate/dance sequence to a clip from Thriller Wednesday night. It is going to look cool. It was taking Tommy and me down memory lane. (We're the only ones over the age of 30 on the demo team...the next oldest on the team is a 21-year-old, and the rest are teenagers.)

I'm feeling a little mixed up this summer. I joined Facebook as part of a class on Web 2.0 technologies for professional development. I started reconnecting with some people from high school that I wouldn't necessarily have otherwise have had any contact with. The only people I've stayed in contact with from high school are my two best friends from high school (Jeff and Angie) and my husband.

Jeff and Angie and I haven't attended a single high school reunion. While we weren't necessarily miserable throughout the experience, we got out as fast as we could and didn't look back. We spend holidays together and we're pretty much like family. We spent the present together and plan our futures together.

Now that I'm on FB and Angie is on FB, we have some contact with "the past." We also have the dreaded 20th HS Reunion coming up this fall. UGH! Are we really that old? Certainly that can't be right?

I am starting to look back fondly at 80s-related things and things related to when I was in the band and in karate (I started karate in High School...met Tommy and ended up marrying him.) But, I also remember being an outsider and a nerd and feeling like a complete loser in school. I don't want those feelings coming back, and I don't want to deal with that again.

I haven't mentioned before that several weeks before I got married, my parents divorced. They ended up both remarrying other people. Now I am related to kids I graduated high school with. My step brother and his wife (on my mom's side of the blended family) were in that popular group in school. My step brother and his sister (on my dad's side of the blended family) were not in the same crowd as me in school, but they weren't in the "cool, mean group" either. Being related to people you used to go to school with is not cool; that's part of being from a tiny Texas town. YUCK!

I have to mention one last thing about feeling old. I spent the entire year thinking I was 38. I told everyone when they'd ask me how old I was that I was 38. Well, I'm not 38. I'm 37. I won't be 38 until July 10. I just effectively stole a year of my own life. I will never get 37 back. That really sucks! I'm already feeling old, trying to get in shape and keep up with these teenagers on the karate demo team and I have to go and steal a year off my own life. How lame is that!