my careless contagion

I could have written about my hangnails or something, as the instructor never read our work. One of the last things I had on my list to write about this summer was this pesky letter that's been haunting me since 5-6-1996. But, I first had to read the letter, which I didn't want to do, as it felt like a can of worms. But, I'm getting good at opening cans of worms. The first thing that struck me was how poorly written the letter was, how sloppy my handwriting was, and the fact that I included a blank page (?). But, it was an honest letter from a no-BS kid who was really glad to be done with the "hell" of high school. Little did I realize I would be launched into another academic abyss very soon. In many ways, going to a community college (for a kid who got a 29 on his ACT) was like going back to the 8th grade. I met the woman who would take up more than 20 years of my life on 5-6-1997, exactly a year after I wrote this letter to myself. What in...

  The author's letter to himself, written in 1996. Perhaps he was too bored to write "death." The last day of high school in 1996, my Physics teacher assigned the class the task of writing ourselves a letter. I don't remember exactly what the point of the exercise was, but we had to wait a significant amount of time, say, 10 years after graduation to open the letter. It's been more than 22 years, and I still haven't opened it. I'm a little annoyed by the fact that it has been sitting there so long, just waiting for me to open it. I tell myself I know what I wrote so I don't have to open it, but, honestly, I have no idea. I know I was a dewy-eyed young man with some untarnished ideals, but I had also endured quite a bit of heartache in my 18 years. Graduating from high school seemed anticlimactic. My mind had already started to wander down the path I thought I was going to take. There was college to look forward to, a career, lots of f...