Everyone I've ever met knows exactly what they're doing

Note: I wrote this two years ago, in 2015 and for some reason did not publish. Doing so now, for all those waiting with bated breath. :)

In my life, I've met people remarkable to me because they were fully certain in their opinions and beliefs.

My high school best friend, who was certain that her former home in Dunmore, Pennsylvania was the best place on earth. And never stopped talking about it.

A college roommate, who was certain that The Electric Light Orchestra, some ice cream restaurant where she worked, her high school in Akron, were the best ever, period. And never stopped talking about them.

A community of opinionated people who thought the Kon Tiki restaurant in Columbus was the absolute best the city had to offer. And I never stopped hearing about it. (Took my parents. It was un-best.)

In their own minds, they were right, I suppose. I didn't know enough to consider that they wanted attention. But I was awed by certainty. I felt my own experiences paled because I had not lived their best ones. I was rarely, if ever, certain of anything because the only constant in my life was change. A new home and new acquaintances practically every year.

Elyria Catholic High School.

Being in my mother's house now over the holidays, walking in the town where I finished grade school and high school, made me remember all this. What I did not fully realize when I was younger was that my own experiences were rich, full and very much broader than those of the peers of my late teen and young adult life. Then I just wanted, as in every new town and school, to fit in.

Sometimes I've wished my father hadn't chosen this town to settle in after our Army wanderings were over. We had seen so much, and this little autoworkers' town was, and is, so small, and peopled with so many souls who barely venture to Cleveland, much less the world beyond.

Then again, perhaps it is rootedness that gives certainty. We could have landed in Chicago, or Dallas, or San Francisco and still I would likely have encountered people who had been there all their lives, certain it was the best place, ever, to be.

The only thing I am certain of is the gratitude I feel for being rooted in one of the nicest families on earth.

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About the photo: In my senior year, my class streamed out of the doors in the distance for an informal class photo. There were no thick trees there then. I had a locker near one of those doors.