I should've listened to my mom..

Yep, mom was right about a fair number of things.

In my defense, my mom tends to tell me mind-numbingly obvious things. She, for example, feels the need to explain how to use anything she gives me. Something like, oh, Windex. (She actually did this--and I was a college graduate at the time.)

So over the years I had a defense prepared for her advice-based attacks. It was something like this:

Step one: Eye roll.
Step two: Deep, pitying sigh. (Because she can't possibly understand.)
Step three: "Whatever, mom, that won't happen to me."

This exact scenario happened when I was wanting to order a senior class ring in high school. She told me I wouldn't wear it, and it'd be a waste of money. After performing steps one through three state above, I argued that I would wear it forever. Ha! I think I wore it for about a month and now it is in a jewelry box somewhere.

More recently, one of her pieces of advice has come back and bit me. After moving recently, I went through all these old pictures from middle and high school, as well as college. Mom always told me to write people's names on the back because, "One day you'll forget who they are."

Insert here eye roll, sigh, and "whatever." My defense at the time was something like, " I went to school with them for 13 years--I won't forget their names!!" Hmm. I should have written down their names--first and last--on the back of the pictures. Or maybe when I scratched out their face with a ball-point pen, I could have jotted down key words next to it to remind me why I was so mad at them. I didn't do either.

I'm just now getting to the age where seeing old school friends is fun. It's exciting to see what they look like now, where they live, and what they are doing. It's fun to laugh at old times and our past fashion and hair-style choices. Thankfully, with the use of MySpace and Facebook or other online communities, it is easier to reconnect and stay in touch.

I'm also getting to the age where I forget a lot. My good friend since middle school, Amy Z, is my connection to the past. I will forget someone and she will swoop in and remind me of a handful of stories and connections that I'd totally forgotten. Sadly, she is not a computer/email/virtual profile sort of person. This leaves me abandoned in the sea of forgetfulness, left to navigate myself to the shore of memories. And I can't swim! *Sigh*

So the moral of the lesson here is simple: write the names of people on the back of pictures. Oh...and I should have listened to my mother.