Glimpse In A Mirror

What Goes Around...

Tonight I spent some time around my sister and her newish boyfriend, someone she is pretty serious about. I vaguely know him from high school, more like I know about him. I didn't really have an opinion of him back then, and now, I think he's a pretty good guy. He seems to care about her and treat her well, and he's fit into our weird family dynamic quite nicely. He's pretty flexible, a quality I admire in people.

Turns out, one of his best friends is the first guy to make my shit list. This guy was a from high school, and wanted to date me -- that is -- until he met my sister. My Dad had already told me that "she's the pretty one, your're the smart one..." so the fact that a guy would fall for my sister over me wasn't shocking. And he didn't break my heart... we didn't spend that much time together and I wasn't crazy about him first. So, in the grand scheme of love, this first loser of my dating career isn't a major player. I remember that my sis went out with him for a while, and I remember thinking that if she was crazy enough to go out with a guy who would dump a girl for her sister, she deserved whatever she got. I don't remember why they stopped dating, but I also don't remember any trauma on her part.

My sis mentioned that she and her new guy go out to dinner with my shit list guy and his wife all of the time, and that the wife doesn't know that she and he dated at one time. Just proves my point -- once a shit head, always a shit head. I do wish, for his sake, that he had outgrown such things, but apparently he didn't.

I wondered tonight how I would feel about going out to dinner with that foursome... but there is this wall that comes up in my gut about that idea. It's not that I've nursed a grudge against him all of these years, I didn't even remember him when I was thinking about the people I might see at my next high school reunion. It might be interesting to observe him a bit, watching him squirm, and then for me to publicly remind him of our dating story in the group, in front of the wife, of course. That might be interesting. But overall, my gut feeling is that it just isn't the way I would want to spend some time. In fact, I'd rather play solitaire on the computer than live out that scenario. THAT is saying something.

I thought, too, about forgiveness, and checked my heart to see if I'm holding on to something that I should let go of. I'm still thinking about that one.