2:20 p.m. - 2004-12-20
When Sarah Met Jamie, Part One
Jamie and I have known each other since junior high, and we (well, me, anyway) often get people asking how we ended up together after being friends for so long. The whole story of how I even ended up knowing him is pretty lengthy, so I'm going to split it up into numerous entries. This is the first part.
Out of the five schools I've been to in my life, only one of them really involved any sort of decision on my part. My first primary school, in England, was the only public school in our village, so it was pretty much a no-brainer. When we moved here, we lived less than a block from an elementary school. Another pretty obvious choice.
My sister went to junior high at the academic school the next neighbourhood over. When I got to grade six, I had to decide between her school and the less academic school that almost all of my friends were going to.
There was one other girl in my class making the same decision between the two schools. The morning that our applications were due, I still hadn't decided, and I called her to find out what she had decided, figuring that if I didn't have to be totally alone at my sister's school, I'd go there.
But her mother answered the phone, and she thought I was another girl in our class that she disapproved of. She told me my friend was in the shower and I'd just have to talk to her at school.
I decided it wasn't worth the risk of being stuck not knowing anyone, so I registered for the other school, the one that all the popular girls were going to. When I got to school, I discovered that my friend had chosen the other school. But I figured I'd made my decision and might as well stick to it. With typical 11-year-old logic, I didn't think I'd be allowed to change my mind even though it would mean nothing more than changing a line on a form. I'd gone through the entire application process for the academic school, and had been placed near the top of the admissions list. (Even then I was a slacker who tested well. My grades were decent, but whenever I actually bothered to try my results were always off the charts. You'd think I'd have learned to apply myself at some point, but 12 years, a high school diploma and a university degree later, and I'm still a slacker who pulls it out at the last minute. Every time I actually made an effort in university, my professor would invite me to be in honours English. And yet... Maybe if I'd gone to the academic school I'd have acquired some motivation.) Even after all the extra work that had gone into applying (essays, letters, explanations of volunteer work and exceptional service, blah blah.), I settled on the other school simply because someone's mother thought I was somebody else.
Fate is funny sometimes.
