Forgiving

I realized over the break that I’m guilty of holding grudges. I was invited by some old friends to drop by someone’s house where some people were hanging out. So I brought keith with me and we went over to say hello. We didn’t stay long and it was kind of awkward as these sorts of things generally are (when you’ve gone away and others have stayed). When we left Keith and I were talking about it and he made reference to a guy who was there as ‘a good guy’…I said “no he’s not, Derrick is a jerk!”… keith looked at me funny. While we’d been there he had been nothing but kind…gotten us drinks, made conversation…then I realized that I couldn’t actually think of the last time he actually was a jerk to me.
It all started I think when I was in grade eight and he was in grade nine. I’d just gotten over a huge crush on this guy named Shaun and poor Derrick was my next victim. He was the older brother of my good friend but only a year older than me. Being young and silly I probably freaked him out and for the rest of my highschool life he was either ignoring me or being rude. And so, three years outside of highschool I found my self still not liking him b/c of this treatment. Three years changes a lot. So I’m realizing that there are a few people who I ‘don’t like’ b/c of what they did or how they treated me in highschool. And frankly I’ve come to the conclusion that no one deserves to be judged for life based on how they were on 18 or 19. So, all I can do is give people a second chance and hope that for all the bad impressions and mistreatments that I was involved in, I’ll be given a second chance too.