It’s a stack of photos - three rolls of film’s worth.  They lie buried in a box under my bed 99.9% of the time.

They are photos of monuments and landmarks. Graves and soldiers. Capitols and statues.  No groupings of friends.  No wacky close up’s trying to get me in the frame.  No friends at all.

It was a long awaited trip.  One met with excitement and anticipation.  Three years of begging to follow in my brother’s footsteps.  To join my best friend and classmates.  To go to Washington, D.C. for a full week without my parents.  Just me and my best bud, and a few other friends…and fifteen other classmates, a few teachers.

I was in seventh grade. The school did it every year.  I wasn’t exceptionally popular (I’d lost that goal in sixth grade)…but I had two of the bestest friends, and a small group of friends that accepted me.  One of those best friends was going on this trip with me.

By three days into the trip…I had no friends.  It happened so fast and so embarassingly so it still pains me to even look at these pictures. 

My BFF and I were huge into NKOTB (yes…yes), and we both were totally in love with Joey.  She’d brought along a picture and set it gently into the frame of the hotel picture that was on the wall.  Someone (a maid? classmate? roommate?) defaced the picture during the trip.

Somehow I got blamed.  That wasn’t the embarassing part, though…they didn’t tell me they for some reason they thought I’d done it…they waited.  Then, after a day of sightseeing I went in for my bathroom time.  I went in, did my business, took a shower and came out.

By the next day the rumors swirled.  They were ridiculous…but no one cared.  Suddenly that night I was the focus of hilarity and someone even wrote a song about how I had managed to wash my hair in the toilet.  My ‘friends’ and roommates attacked me verbally in the room, hurled insults and accusations…and I spent the remainder of the trip sleeping curled up on a hotel chair to sleep without even a blanket or one person to stand by me and be my friend. 

The remaining tours were done in the back of the trip, talking to a teacher.  I had no one to eat with, to talk with, to take silly pictures with…while my former friends latched on to more popular kids on the trip and boosted their own popularity talking about me.

It was among the darkest periods of my youth.  It is why I absolutely loath the thought of my kids going to middle school and having to face fellow middle school evilness.  It is why I never look at these pictures, why I never think of my trip.  When I think of D.C. I think only of the time I lived near there and went to see shows a few blocks from the white house.

So why today? 

Brandon came home with a permission slip and letter explaining the fifth grade trip to D.C. (much, much shorter…like an INSANELY FAST trip). 

I like to think I’ve forgiven those girls for what they did and how they acted…at least I try to…I don’t like holding grudges (even if I am good at it)…but it’s something I can never forget because to this day it’s affected how I am, WHO I am.  I feel it every day I look in the mirror and find something worng with myself. I feel it every time I feel like the odd ball out at a party, watching everyone else have fun wishing I could disappear into the shadows.

I want my son to see the capitol.  I want him to be able to go with his friends.  I know he WANTS to go…but I hesitate.  My own past holds back his future and enjoyment.  Can I forgive…Can I forget?  Can I push past my own past (and cough up the dough) for him to go…

Can he have the trip that I never could?  I have to let him try…for both of us.