Lori Duff Writes

I sometimes get a flash of memory from things I did or said before I was, say, twenty-five years old and I am nearly felled with humiliation. Man, I was a weirdo before my frontal lobe fully developed. When I was an adolescent.

I guess everyone spends time trying on personalities. You’ve got to figure out who you are and where your boundaries are. You’ve got to learn what it’s okay to say and not say. That’s the point of youth.  People who start their lives too young, who don’t get to test their wings when they’re in their late teens and early twenties, tend to do this when they’re in their forties and fifties when it’s not okay and not dignified, usually to disastrous consequences.

So it’s amazing to me, when I have these memories, that anyone who knew me during those times of self-discovery, is still willing to speak to me. If I were them, and I heard my name, I’d cringe and think, “Oh no, not that freak.”

I’m also glad the internet wasn’t a thing in the 80s. Most of the dumb things I said and did are only recorded in people’s faulty memories and not in the cloud.

All of which is a long introduction to get to this point: many of my best friends are my oldest friends. Lately, I’ve spent some time with people who knew me as a teenager. I still like them. And more surprisingly, they seem to like me. At least, they keep inviting me back.

Stunning.

I recently reconnected with a high school friend I hadn’t laid eyes on since the late eighties. We’d talked a few times on the phone, decades ago, and we reconnected on social media, but hadn’t had any actual face-to-face communication in some time. I admit to being a little nervous about it. Would he judge me for the schmuck I was during the Reagan administration?

Readers, he did not. We picked right back up where we left off, talking and laughing seamlessly, ending with, “Let’s not wait another forty years to see each other.” “We can’t,” I replied. “In another forty years we’ll be dead.”

I also recently met up with some of my sorority sisters for our annual summer get-together. We’ve been doing this for the last some-odd years. We’re definitely not the same people we were when we were planning rush and mixers in our late teens and early twenties. Collectively, we’ve been through divorces and deaths and a whole host of tragedies. We’ve also celebrated a whole lot of things—babies and graduations and promotions and honors. And we’ve gone years and years without speaking.

But when it comes down to it, we’re still sisters. They’re still the people I’ll fly across the country for. (And they’re still the people who invite me to fly across the country. This is key.) Because this is something I’ve figured out: we’re all embarrassed by the stupid crap we did when we were adolescents. That’s the point of adolescence. But we’re all essentially the same person. I learned that at my high school reunion(s). I liked the same people I liked in high school, and disliked the same people I disliked in high school. We mature, we grow, we mellow, we sand off the rough edges, but we’re still essentially the same people at our core. 

Think of it like hair. I might have had an embarrassing mullet and/or perm in the 80s. Maybe. I might have used a lot of Aqua Net. But I still have the same brown hair. I’m just doing something less embarrassing with it.

I hope. Only time will tell.

Buy my book, Devil’s Defense, or the audiobook, preorder the sequel, Devil’s Hand, and/or find me on Substack.

Lori Duff

Lori B. Duff is an award-winning author who practices law on the side.  Her latest book, “If You Did What I Asked in the First Place” was awarded the Gold Medal for humor in the Foreword INDIES awards in 2019. You can follow her on Twitter at @LoriBDuff and on Facebook. For more blogs written by Lori, click here. For more information about Lori in general, click here. If you want Lori to do your writing for you, click here. If you want Lori to help you market your book, click here.