Just how far can I move a goal post?

            Wooaahh, it’s been a while since I posted. Woops. Life goes on.

            I had another repeat moment of realisation today about just how much easier it is to change the goalposts on ‘growing up’ than to actually go ahead and do it. I’ve been moving goalposts all summer, albeit with reasonably good reason. First was graduation, then my brother’s wedding, then getting back home after visiting my parents, then my 21^st birthday, then moving house, then my friend’s wedding in St. Andrew’s…..and now all of that is past and I don’t have any more potential goalposts to try and pin it on. Which is a little disgruntling to be honest (is disgruntling even a word?).

            But in my defence, most of these goalposts were fairly major, and they all came so close together that as soon as one was over I had to prepare for the next. I’ll take some overwhelmed points if I can get them.

Moving house was an interesting one. Packing and unpacking all your worldly possessions really forces you to actually consider them. I uncovered an impressive amount of random crap which clearly had meaning at some point in my life but is from a time so long past that I actually can’t remember what that meaning was, which is also disgruntling (I’ve decided that it is a word, so now I’m going to use it, whether you like it or not. Besides, MS Word is on my side.). I think my favourite example was a chocolate wrapper which someone had written ‘pixxie destruction!!’ on. I have absolutely no idea what ‘pixxie destruction’ means, why it was written on a fairly unremarkable chocolate wrapper, or even what it could vaguely relate to. I can’t even recognise the handwriting. (If that was written by anyone reading this, please explain!)

Less mysterious, but still full of a lot of random, was my high school yearbook, signed with such awesome random by my school friends. Reading through the messages often made me smile, but also wonder at how some things have so epically changed since then – some friendships blossomed, some pretty much disappeared. Strangely, the thing that freaked me out most was when I tried to read a message that my English teacher had written – his handwriting was notoriously bad, and I couldn’t actually read his name. And I couldn’t remember what it was. This was rather disconcerting considering he taught me for four years, only just over three years ago. It took me at least ten full minutes to remember, and the panic I felt in my momentary amnesia was shocking in its magnitude. It was full blown heart-racing, blood-draining-from-my-face, gouging-my-eyes-out-in-fear-and-dread panic (well, give or take a few eye gouges). Who knew it would freak me out so much not being able to remember details like that? But then who knew my memory was so crap as to forget details like that in only three years?….well actually, that would be most people who know me…

It is a little distressing though, because at the time the idea that you could forget things like that seems about on the same level of likely as, well I don’t know, how about the random acquisition of super powers. Clearly, however, my ability to forget things is higher than I thought, and the things which seem so ingrained in my mind, can be erased from it with relative ease. Hmmm, I wonder how far I can stretch the consequent implications for the random acquisition of super powers from that….if I’m honest (and I’m a little ashamed/proud of myself for this), my first thought on noticing a mysterious red swelling on the back of my right hand a couple of weeks back was, ‘Oooo, that could be a radioactive super-power-inducing spider bite!’. Yeah, I know.

Anyway, I feel like I may have lost the original thread of this post. Oh yeah: the continual moving of goalposts before actually growing up. Ooo, I know – if I make the random acquisition of super powers the next goalpost, then I should be safe from growing up for a good while yet….unless it was a radioactive super-power-inducing spider bite!