Going to France with your High School Girlfriend

Just to be clear, the last time I had a high school girlfriend, I was also in high school. At least that is the only high school girlfriend that I will be writing about on this blog. Ok, let's start the post...

Several weeks ago I started chatting online with my old high-school girlfriend. Imagine, we pretty much stopped talking about 8 years ago. Anyway, we were really close back then, so I have had a lot of fun catching up with her a little bit over the past few weeks. She is a newscaster now, which seems like a cool job. She also seems to be sort of a local celebrity in the city where she "does the news". I'll bet it won't be long before she moves on to a bigger market.

A few weeks ago we were talking about how we broke things off back when we were 18, and I was sort of musing at how things had ended up working out. I think it is a pretty cool story. You see, when we graduated from high school, we took the money that people sent us for graduation and went to France for a 1-month study abroad program. It sounds like a really cool experience, except that on the second day of the month-long-trip we broke up. Here is a valuable lesson: You probably shouldn't go with your good-looking, 18-year-old high-school girlfriend to France for a month. There is always the risk that she might realize that she is 18-years old, good-looking, and in France with her high-school boyfriend. If she does, in fact, realize this then things are probably not going to work out between the two of you. Of course there was a lot more too it than that, but those details are not relevant to this story.

The point is that after I got dumped, I ended up spending the entire month with this group of students from Spain. These kids pretty much adopted me for the month, and they made a point to invite me out with them everywhere they went. I did not speak a word of Spanish, but I was just so grateful. They really took care of me.

Anyway, when I got back to the States and went to college, I started studying Spanish. I had this idea that I would eventually go see all these people and be able to speak Spanish with them. As it turns out, I have never been to Spain. On the other hand, the Spanish-language skills I developed helped me to get my first job right out of college with a real estate developer down in Panama. I'm pretty sure that unique experience helped me to get into a law school program that was slightly out of my range based on my LSAT score. The law school program and my Spanish language skills have also afforded me to be here studying in Argentina right now.

So things have worked out for me. If I wouldn't have broken up with my high-school girl friend in France back when I was 18 years old, I probably would not be sitting here now. She tells me that she is glad she was able help :-)