You crazy kids...

Today was Ball State's homecoming. I was in Muncie doing a couple of photo shoots, and I decided to head to the tailgate lot and see who I could see. The first thing I noticed was the massive amount of horrific outfits that the youngfolk were sporting. We're talking leggings & jeggings with short t-shirts, short shorts on girls and boys alike, hot pink suits, and cut up BSU t-shirts worn as bandeau tops. Yeeps. It was ugly. I only felt mildly old and out of place in my mom jeans and Irish sweatshirt. Thank goodness the people I was hanging with were all dressed like me (well, not just like me...that would have been weird and creepy and cultish).

I looked around...and everyone I saw was plastered. Hammered. Wasted. Shitfaced. A few short years ago, that was me. Acting a fool, jumping on people, cruising the aisles of the lot like I owned the place. Today, I felt like an outsider. Not the "I'm alone and have no friends" outsider. It was more like a person looking into a fishbowl going, "What's that little guy doin'?"...that kind of outsider.

So what was separating me from the majority of the crowd? Why was I feeling so out of place? I suppose it has something to do with the wedding ring on my finger and the baby that 7 months ago was still baking away inside of me. It's funny how kids can make you feel old. And it's even funnier that I could care less.

I was perfectly happy drinking my bottled water and watching the world around me. I looked at everyone not in a judgy way....just an observant way...enjoying their fun as they had it...remembering the times when I had that kind of fun, too. In a way, I missed it, but in many more ways, I was happy to be done with that phase of my life. I didn't have to worry about how I was getting home, and I had the best prize of all when I actually got home...my sweet, smiling baby girl.

My old roommate and friend Lo was at homecoming, too, and she ran into a group of college girls at the tailgate. She struck up a convo about how they should live it up because it goes so fast. The proceeded to tell her she was pretty for her age. She's 25.

Another homecoming has now passed, putting me one year further from that awesome day in May 2007 when I walked across that stage and got my degree. I had 4 awesome years at BSU and don't regret a thing...but it seems to me that pulling into my driveway this afternoon was the best homecoming yet.