Wedding Blog

Angela and Jordan wearing early ’90s fashion.
(Sadly, I think I owned a baby doll dress like that in blue.)

As my family spent 10 years without cable, I never actually saw My So-Called Life when it was on the air. Once or twice, I caught a glimpse of an episode at my friend Melissa’s house after school, but mostly I just glossed over it, writing it off as another teen drama.

So, you can imagine my surprise when, years later, I saw the show and came to realize that I shared a number of similarities with main character Angela Chase. I grew apart from my childhood friend in favour of a slightly stranger crowd in high school, when I was 15, I dyed my hair a shade eerily similar to Crimson Glow and, somehow, I managed to end up hanging around with a guy similar to her all-time heartthrob, Jordan Catalano. Now, to be fair, my Jordan wore about 60 per cent less plaid and we never hooked up in our school’s boiler room (sigh), but he had this kind of moony looking face a la Old-School Jared Leto and I was ridiculously smitten with him. I mean how could I not be? He was the first boy to call me pretty (which, when you’re 14, with braces, feels very much like a small miracle) and he was interested in my writing after hearing a piece I’d written for our English class. At the time, I was very shy and private about my work, but Jordan* often asked me to read stories I’d written and gave me enthusiastic feedback when he’d finished them.

Though things eventually ended up getting more complicated between us and he transferred schools during our senior year, the time I spent hanging out with him ended up being good for me. I learned what I wanted (and perhaps more importantly, what I deserved) out of a relationship and I realized that I wanted to continue writing and applied to a journalism program in college.

Once in a blue moon, Jordan would enter my thoughts (I thought of him when something I wrote ended up winning a Columbia Journalism Award), but I went about my life and somewhere, out there in the world, he went about his.

Until recently, when, through the glory of Facebook, I heard from him again, almost ten years after our original parting.

At first, it was slightly weird, seeing his name in my Inbox, a blast from the past I definitely wasn’t expecting, but, when I read his message, it ended up making me smile. After all of our teenage drama, we’d both come out the other side of things okay. Plus, it was kind of cool, now that we both had had a bit of time and perspective, to be able to joke and laugh about the old days.

I’ll probably never see Jordan again, but, in the midst of all the planning and preparation to move on to a new chapter in my life, it was really great to finally give this old one the ending it deserved.

What about you ladies? Has anyone from your past popped out of the woodwork in the midst of your planning?

(Bonus question: What was your favourite MSCL character? I’d either pick Angela or Ricky.)

*= Not his real name.