In high school, one of my favorite things to do was sit around a box of pizza with my friends, argue over the amount of Taylor Swift songs allowed to be played and gossip about all of the drama we could think of. It didn’t matter whose drama it was; it was all fair game. That circle was a sacred space. Nothing was ever really mean-spirited. If anything, it was more informative. We lived vicariously through everyone else’s drama, because our lives were generally pretty confined to that circle. The most drama we ever had would be an occasional break up, a new job, or an unfair test.
After graduation, all of this drama seemed so petty and I went away to college hoping to forget not only my drama, but everyone else’s as well. That was high school, after all, and this was college. Who needs all that drama when I’m clearly going to be busy actually living? To me, the past was meant to stay in the past. The circle around a box of pizza would be for telling each other stories from college. After a year apart, I didn’t think this was an unreasonable thought.
To my dismay, even after a year away at school, the circle so easily fell back into its old ways of discussing high school drama. Who broke up with who, who changed the most and who is still friends with who were all still popular points of conversation. All of these questions of which I didn’t really care about the answers were still circulating and, in all honesty, I stopped caring. I would rather have you tell me the entire backstory of your professor just so I can understand one funny thing he did than talk about people from high school who probably don’t even remember our names.
I suppose I understand this phenomenon. You get an old group of friends together and instead of everyone talking about their current lives, everyone talks about what is familiar. It’s easier that way. New stories, especially about new people, take a while to explain, and by the time you’ve given a whole backstory on why the story is even relevant, it’s lost its purpose. Talking about things from the past is easy because everyone already knows the backstory. It’s relevant and overall easier because everyone is on the same page.
Unfortunately, this takes the excitement out of making new memories. What’s the point of having new stories if you can’t share them? Sure, it’s nice to keep them to yourself, but it’s so nice to be able to tell these new stories while sitting around a pizza with your closest friends. It may not be easy, but it’s more real. Being stuck in the past not only gets boring, but doesn’t allow you to grow. If you’re constantly reliving the old high school drama, you’re never going to move on from it. Part of college is learning how to do that. So, let’s leave the high school drama where it belongs -- in high school.
