June 2, 1997

Today is the 15th anniversary of the day I wrecked my parents' new car. It's all in the book, so skip to about page 60 if you haven't gotten there yet, and sometimes I wonder why I even put it in there. It remains the most traumatic thing I've ever been through. Not because of the event itself, I mean, people wreck cars every day, but because of my status in life at that point in time. I was fifteen, was just finishing my first year of high school, and (as always) I was very aware of anything that could affect the way my peers perceived me. So showing up at school with a disgustingly bashed-in face and armed merely with the explanation that I had driven my car into a ditch didn't exactly help improve my image among the in-crowd.

But the good thing about growing up and becoming an adult is that perspective kicks in and things that used to mean everything to you eventually come to mean almost nothing. In short, you get over it. You get over the failures and humiliations and horribly misguided outfits. You get over the friends you never had, the opportunities you never got, and the boys that never liked you. You don't forget, mind you, but you get over it. You get so over it that you may even turn all these experiences into a book and let the whole world in on just how unglamorous your early years were. So, yeah, you get over it. It just might take 15 years.