Breaking promises instead of breaking hearts . . .

When I was five years old, I promised my mother I would never cut my hair or be a rebellious teenager. I used to envision myself being a sweet sixteen-year-old who would accidentally break the hearts of all the princes simply with her beauty and brains and charm. When I pictured myself at twenty-one years old, I thought I would be sitting in a dorm room at Yale, reading through a sexy pair of spectacles and unknowingly causing all the college princes to swoon with every subconscious twirl of my long, shiny hair.

Obviously, every cute guy worth having is secretly a prince.

Last night, I was noting how drastically different my life now is from how I envisioned it would be all those years ago. In fourth grade, I let my best friend convince me to cut my hair for the first time for "Twin Day" at school. At sixteen years of age, I was awkward and nerdy and brainy and only popular when I would let people copy my notes or my homework. I was several years into my rebellious stage by that point and was probably anything but sweet.

Here I am at twenty-one years old. I have the long, shiny hair and the (seldom-worn) sexy glasses, but I never made it to Yale University. (The application fee was $75! What high school student has that kind of money laying around for college applications?) I have yet to seduce a prince with my literacy, but I guess there's still time for that.

While I may seem like a huge disappointment when compared to the dreams I had as a child, I look at my friends and realize that I wouldn't trade my life for anything. I get to spend the weekends squished on Boy's couch with five or more boys and surrounded by ten others, all of whom are fantastic and amazing people.

In fact, I love them so much that I almost cried tonight at the beauty of this conversation when I realized that, had I gone to Yale, I never would have heard a word of it...

Pimp: You have a chunk of something in your teeth, Boy.
[Boy digs around in his mouth for a minute, finally dislodging the offending "chunk" and staring at it incredulously for a minute before speaking.]
Boy: What the deuce?
Cooley: It looks like a piece of meat.
Pimp: It looks like you ate your booger.