the words of the prophets were written on the subway walls

I remember the first defining moment in my life.  I was in the 5^th grade.  I had sat there for weeks watching her across the lunch room. Sometimes she had a simple sandwich, just bread and cheese. Some days she had a 99 cent bag of chips from the gas station and most days she had nothing at all. I looked around my table.  Kayla, Megan, Katherine, Robin.  All with the most fashionable Lisa Frank lunchboxes filled with food that would mostly end up in the trash can.  I sat there and tried to figure out what made me better than her.  What made us more deserving of the things we had, more worthy of sitting at our table.  I realized somewhere in all of that thinking that I was more like her than I was like them.   So Friday, I sat at her table.  I didn’t even think Katherine would notice I was missing until I looked up and saw her staring at me with everyone else in tow behind her, Lisa Frank still in hand.  She told me that I could either get up and go back to my seat at the table where I belonged or I would never be welcome at that table again.  I spent every day for the next 3 years at lunch with Typhany.  I will always consider her the first true friend I ever had and I will never regret the decision I made that day.  I still speak to Typhany on a regular basis and when things happen in my life I know I can always count on her.  I have no idea where the rest of those girls are.  They remained the popular crowd all the way through high school.  Funny thing is, once you leave high school, none of that matters.  No one knows who the smart kids were, or who the popular kids were. No one knows the loners, the nerds or the band geeks.  We all work so hard to find out place in that hierarchy and when those four years are over all we have left to show are some badges on a letter jacket and the necessity to once again find out where we belong in the world.  I think I made a great first step that day. Even sitting here now thinking about it my heart swells with pride.  I wish I could saw I was proud of all of my choices.  That I had such clarity in my teen years, or even in my young adult years to make such a strong decision and have no doubt that it was the right one.  Truth be told, I’m not sure I ever made another good choice without first making the wrong one.  I’ve managed to disappoint my parents, my friends and myself in the last 30 years on a rather consistent basis.  But I would still say I turned out alright. Well enough to give advice that I may not always be willing to take on my own.  Well enough to have a clear mind in tragic moments, or at least the tragic moments of those around me.  Well enough to think that maybe someone wants to read what I have to say. That maybe it can turn someone else onto one of those defining moments they can be proud of.  Or in the very least, it can help me to focus on me, who I am and how I got here instead of where I’m going to go next.