I recently read a Facebook post from a former classmate's wife. She praised him for the wonderful husband and father he is and how truly grateful she is for him. I see lots of posts like this from different people, but this one affected me differently. This was someone I had a crush on. This is someone I went on a date with.
I was so happy that he was making such a great life for himself and his family, yet at the same time I was so glad I wasn't the one writing the post about him. In high school I surrounded myself with really great people, boys and girls. They had high moral standards and ambitious goals for high school and life. We supported each other in our efforts to improve. Naturally I had crushes on many of them and even went on dates with some of them, but for one reason or another nothing ever came of it and we all went out separate ways. I'm not very good at staying in contact with people so I don't really know what happened in most of their lives. In my life though, I had some really great experiences. Despite my great life there was one experience that I desperately wanted which continued to elude me: marriage. Sadly, the older I got, the worse my relationships became. The last relationship before I met my husband was the most troublesome of them all. It was the memory of these boys from high school that gave me the strength to break it off. I knew there were good, upstanding, men of character and integrity out there because I had seen and experienced their lives first hand. So do your actions in high school matter? I say yes. The way you act in high school not only effects your life, but those you associate with. It mattered to me in high school, but it mattered even more 14 years later. Thank you to those boys and girls who lived up to their standards. Because of you I met the man of my dreams.
My husband is everything I ever wanted. Apart from his normal qualities that I admire and appreciate, periodically things will randomly pop up about him and I'll remember wishing for those exact qualities in a husband as a young girl. For example, while visiting his family we found a journal he had written when he was a boy. In it he stated that he wanted to live on an acre of land and farm it. As a young girl I yearned for that same thing. We'll see if we get to live out that dream, but at least we both had it.
