Decades Meme / 10, 20, 30

You're still welcome to comment on the "Words" post, below, but I have something new today.

Barb tagged me with this meme: Where were you 10, 20, and 30 years ago?

In the blogging world, when you are ‘tagged’ by a ‘meme’ it means that there is some topic or (usually) a question going around that a blogger writes about and then challenges other bloggers he or she knows to answer as well. Some consider the practice silly or rude for a variety of reasons, and some bloggers refuse to participate. However, if you find the question one of interest you can search by labels, titles, or keywords – or just follow people’s links – to spend hours seeing what others have to say about that topic!

10 years ago: November 3, 1997 – I was 26 and had told everyone I knew that my birthday was the next week. I had a lot of friends. I had finished college five years before and a few years later had moved to Denver to join Caleb Project; was loving it. We’d closed down the research department but recruited a leader whose arrival, when his support was raised, would allow us to reopen it. I’d just traveled to Kyrg~zstn – my third time to do research in Central Asia and my first time as a leader. Had faced some considerable challenges, disappointments, and failures, but was enjoying life and had great hope for the future. I’d moved into the house I live in now and joined the church I’ve been part of ever since.

20 years ago: November 3, 1987 – I was 16 – a week away from turning 17 – and a senior at Redmond High School. I had no idea how much happier and better my life would be a year later when I was off at college. Over a period of several years in the early part of the decade my dad had gone into treatment for alcoholism (25+ years sober now!), mom and dad got divorced, and we moved to the big city. I became a follower of Jesus, and made it my (unexamined) life goals to be popular, happy, and good (with little success, needless to say). The whole decade of the 80s also saw the development and entrenchment of the cardinal rule of my family: try not to upset your sister. I though this rule was a bad idea for all involved, and resented it.

30 years ago: November 3, 1977 – Meg and I were six years old, about to turn seven (did anyone pick up that we have a birthday next weekend?). Living in Maryland and enjoying second grade. Life was about playing pretend, coloring, running around the neighborhood, and watching television. Apparently my tendency to think more highly of myself than I ought to goes way back (to birth, perhaps?): It was about this time that when my teacher asked the class who we thought should be that week’s Big Cheese (sort of like student of the week), I raised my hand and informed the class I would not be there much longer – so it would be a great idea for me to be that week's Big Cheese. Everyone had to write nice things about me in their best handwriting on strips of lined newsprint which were collected and pasted into onto butcher paper and made into a book which I still have, now stashed away someplace in the basement. Life was about to make a big turn: We would sell our house and load everything into a big moving truck, put the dog in the back of the station wagon, and move cross-country to a new life on an island in Puget Sound.

Let’s see, I tag Mandy, Lu, and Phyllis the Zebra ; - ) Will you take the challenge?