Spring Forward has me "Looking Forward"

With it being spring break week, I've been thinking about all the things you look forward to as a child/teenager/college student (spring break being one of these things). Do you remember how big of a deal it was, say to get to a certain age so that you could do certain things? Or get to a certain time in the year or in your life so you could do these things? I do. Here are a few things I remember "looking forward to" in my younger years:

• Getting my ears pierced. My mom would not let me get my ears pierced for so long. You had to be a certain age to get it done alone and I sure couldn't wait that long. She finally gave in. Then, when I turned whatever that age was, I got my second hole. Then my cartilage. Then, the dreaded belly button piercing on my senior trip (something that pregnancy made me regret tremendously, so ugly). She was not happy about the latter 3. I remember being asleep on the couch when I got home from the trip and she lifted my shirt up and gasped. I don't think she really believed I did it when I called to tell her.


• Getting my braces off. Luckily, I was younger when I got them so I was younger when I got them off. I remember the day clearly. I was in 7th grade a Clinton Jr. High and I got back from the ortho around lunch. The first person I saw was Lindsey and she said, "Let me see your teeth!" I am weird about people seeing things before the finished product, i.e. my home (another day, another post). So, like a ventriloquist, I hummed the words, "No, not until I put my lipstick on." She didn't understand why this was, but it's just one of those things. I felt like my teeth would look better if I had lipstick on so I had to go to the bathroom to put it on and then I showed her. She was so annoyed at me by this point that she didn't even "freak out" over my new and improved pearly whites.


• Getting my drivers license. So now you see why I was so distraught over failing that test. It was the end of the world I thought.


• Turning 17 so I could go to an R movie.

• "Making" cheerleading each year. Or "making" tennis. I wanted these things so bad and thought I would just die if I didn't get them.


• Turning 18 or 21 so you could get in the places your friends were without having to use a fake i.d. How funny are the i.d.'s we used in college? I wish I still had all the ones I used so that I could scan them and show these people's faces. No resemblance whatsoever. I'm not exaggerating when I say I'm pretty sure I remember one of my friends getting in somewhere with a guys i.d...or maybe it was a black person. Whatever the case, I remember thinking "Gosh I wouldn't tell anyone I got through with THAT i.d."


• Getting a later curfew. At the time you are so bitter about having a curfew, getting grounded, etc. But now I realize if you don't have parents who have rules, you turn out like, well, those people whose parents didn't have rules.

I got to thinking about what all I have to look forward to these days. One being that I look foward to watching my kids go through these phases of life. Can't wait to be with both these boys on our journey ahead.