Realities and a flash of time

Yesterday, I met a friend. It wasn't just another going-to-the-store excursion with a schoolmate, or a hike with my cousin. It was a real girl, who I hadn't really known until then, who listened to me and talked to me like I was normal and had the same sense of humor as me. Even though it wasn't until about five minutes into our meeting that the awkwardness began to ebb away, I found myself wishing that I could just go back to the beginning, and once again capture that feeling of pure excitement and mystery, not knowing what was going to happen but being so enthralled with the idea that it would happen soon.

I guess I've been thinking like that lot recently. I just let things slip by too fast, and don't think to take a memory snapshot of them, because I don't think that they'll be that important later. It's the weirdest things that are, though. The most amazing part about starting this school year was wondering about what it would be like with all of the new sixth graders, and how I would like my new teachers. I let my imagination just carry me away, and then I meet up with the reality once time catches up with me.

Realities are like crossing a line. Once you are there, there's no going back without the help of amnesia, and you just have to live with the truth. What I've found, though, is that even though the reality is different from my imagination,  I like it just as much, only in a different way. For example, between two of my friends, they have hosted four exchange students over the past three years, from Austria, Italy, Thailand, and Finland. Every time they break the news that a new one is arriving and give me her name, my imagination runs wild with what I think she will look like and act like. By the time she arrives, the reality is so much different, but I don't care, because she's so amazing as it is.

The real thing that bothers me is the feeling of being ignorant. If only I could remember what it was like to not play the violin, watch ballet only from the audience, or not know the exchange student from Thailand. It's like a little snapshot in time, that only I can revisit or remember, if only I had the power, and of course there's the part of my head that reminds me that I actually know the truth now. If I had a time machine (and there isn't much above that on the list of things that I would really, really like), I would go back to something like the time that my cousin was my age, fourteen, and apparently the coolest person on Earth. Even though I would know that I wouldn't be twelve anymore, at least I could see how he acted (since now, at sixteen, he's still the coolest person on Earth and I'm just a little kid). If only I had written it down in a diary, but, like I said, I just didn't find these things small important. A bit depressing, how fast my life goes by. I guess I just have to spend more time focusing on the little things, the details, and not the just the main themes. Otherwise, you miss so much.