Road Trip Wednesday

It's another Road Trip Wednesday over at YA Highway, and this week's question is...

In preparation for our Bookmobile discussion of Kody Keplinger’s A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHTMARE, how did you spend/how will you spend the summer after graduation?

It's been a while since I graduated, so I have to really think back on this one...

Uh, no.

Not that long (although my kids seem to think it was).

It was more like this...

It was 1994 and the internet was still a baby. I didn't have an e-mail address, a cell phone, or a clue about what I was going to do.

I did, however, have an opportunity to go to Sweden thanks to my parent's generous graduation gift. But I was seventeen, stupid, and smitten with the current boyfriend. And to be honest, the idea leaving home terrified me. Getting on a plane and flying to another country terrified me. College terrified me.

So I stayed home to be with a boy who no longer matters. I worked two jobs, hung out with friends, and signed up for fall classes at the local community college.

In all of the summers of my life so far, the summer after graduation is hardly a memorable one. It was dull and boring and safe. I was still stuck in my shell, unable and unwilling to break free. If I only I'd been brave enough then...how different my life may have turned out.

I think this is why I'm drawn to YA so much. Because I can live vicariously through the tough, courageous characters.

The ones who would've gone to Sweden.