Smart Girl

Facebook is haunting me again.

I have gotten in touch with some of my classmates from grade school. The Laurel Hill Elementary Class of '82, to be exact. T was so glad to find me... he remembered me as the "smartest girl in the school." At first I was flattered, but then I was overwhelmed.

How do you live up to your potential? More importantly, how do you live down your unrealized potential? I changed elementary schools twice when I was a kid, and seemed to be light-years ahead of everyone else whenever I made the change. Mom has said that various school officials wanted me to skip grades on several occasions, but she refused to let me. I can very clearly remember being the only "gifted" third grader in a program that was geared towards grades 4-6. I was an oddity.

Perhaps the most traumatic memory of Laurel Hill was the changing of my name. I had been Chris for as long as I could remember, but was told when I registered with my Mom that there were already a great many Chrises and that I needed to be Christie. Who was Christie? All of the sudden, I was this brilliant kid thrust into a strange environment with a family that was disintegrating and couldn't even keep my name.

I certainly can't blame Christie for my failure to live up to my "potential." What is potential, anyway? Was I supposed to be a doctor or a lawyer or a politician or an astronaut? Am I in the situation that I'm in because I wasn't pushed harder? Am I simply lazy? Is it all just crappy luck, and I need to get over it and be grateful for what I have and who I have turned out to be? Or, do I deserve every misery that I've had over the last few years and need to be grateful that I have a husband that loves me and can carry me when I falter?

It was a bit of a relief to change school districts when I was in High School and be able to go back to being Chris again, but that was only the tip of the iceberg of the unrealized potential. I was no longer the smartest kid in the room, much less the school. Because I came in from a different school district, I wasn't even accepted into the gifted program at HEHS. Was I relieved not to be under that microscope? Was I angry not to be recognized as "special?" I don't really remember. I threw myself into Choir and got great grades and skated by with only as much work as I needed to do.

Once again, I feel as though I've lost my identity. At a party over the weekend, I was asked how work was going and I didn't know what to say other than "collapsing." What was I supposed to say? That I'm almost 40, working two jobs, making virtually no money, am completely exhausted, but I was the smartest girl in my entire elementary school? That I'm not a bookseller any longer, and I still am a wife and cat mother, but I can bake fabulous cookies and even make a mean batch of fudge? And what is it that I'm supposed to do?

Wait it out, I guess. I'm not the most patient person in the world, though. Maybe I should change my name and start over again. I don't ask often, but I would love a concrete answer about SOMETHING.