Past Dave, meet Future Dave!

When I was a senior in high school, I had an English teacher who I could hardly have loathed more. She responded well to being hated, though, so I ended up getting high marks and the citizenship comment "A pleasure to have in class," which was strange, since we spent a fair amount of time shouting at each other. My favorite thing that she did all year was screen "Braveheart" instead of "Apocalypse Now" after we'd finished reading Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Of course, the latter film pertains to Conrad and the former has exactly nothing to do with it, but the class decided they'd rather watch Mel Gibson do Jesus Christ poses and I'm pretty sure she had a hardon for martyrdom. So that was the kind of teacher she was.

She did do something pretty cool that I'm going to have to big-up her for, though: at the end of the year, she had everyone in her class write a letter to themselves in the future, and turn it in in a sealed envelope. I hadn't forgotten about it, exactly, but for some reason I halfway expected never to see it again - and if I did see it again, I thought it wouldn't be for a few more years at the least.

So you can imagine the surprise I felt when I received a package this morning at work containing my letter to myself. It brought on a strange rush of nostalgia, coupled with relief that the opening two sentences are actually kind of true: "So, you're all growed up now. 23 years old, a college graduate, on the way to some sort of future I can barely fathom, back here in the past." Given the fact that the graduation took slightly longer than expected, it's really nice that I still hit the mark.

Some other choice excerpts:

Don't forget your flaws. You can be stubborn, egotistical, and pigheaded. You need to work on humility and on valuing the opinions of others; on diplomacy and on a little rhetorical caution...You need to not move on so quickly - people are worth more thn your ebbing tide of acceptance and dismissal...

You need to express your gratitude more often and with greater candor. Thank Mom & Dad, who were always there for you, loved you, respected you, and were quite possibly the best parents on the planet... Thank your friends, who courageously accepted you with love for who you were, and are now.

At the beginning of Summer of 2001, you hoped that you were in love and that things would work out as beautifully as possible. [Ed. note: Shock of shocks, they did not. But at least he remembers my birthday.] You were excited about the future and the surprises it held.

I still am.