to eat your heart out, or not to eat your heart out?

A couple of days ago Lesley made a post about the "eat-your-heart-out mentality" of running into exes or people who have rejected you to rub in how much better you're doing without them and how they clearly made a mistake in passing you up. Whenever I'm back in K-W, I keep an eye out for certain boys I went to highschool and junior high with, because I look a lot different now (recently suggested 'ironic' T-shirt slogan: "I Was Fatter In High School"). If you currently find me unattractive, you have no idea how far I've come. Unfortunately, I never do run into said boys. And I didn't want to tonight because I have a large red pimple in the middle of my nose. You're welcome for sharing.

I took my mom to see the no-longer-new Harry Potter movie at the mall cineplex where I used to work in highschool. While we were in line to have our tickets taken, I turned around to look at the concession stand, and after a lot of staring and squinting, was pretty certain I saw one of the boys who rejected me in highschool working behind the counter. I couldn't be completely sure from that distance, but I was about 85% sure. And he wasn't just some small hiccup in my personal history, but the gentleman who I had for some reason allowed to totally shipwreck my self-esteem for years. He also happened to bear an uncanny resemblance to Harry Potter, to bring things full-circle.

Hidden in the crowd of people in line, large pimple safely tucked away, I felt pretty self-satisfied. I had gotten out of Waterloo and gone on to . . . okay, waste my potential so that I was too embarrassed to go visit my highschool teachers last week, but the point is I left, and there he was, 22 and working the terrible job I'd had at 17. HA. I win. Right?

Maybe not:

1. I was laid off from that job at the end of my first summer and never hired back because I was crappy at upselling. This was by no means a mass layoff. I think they got rid of an entire three or four employees from the concessions department of a 10-screen cineplex. You do the math.
2. Minimum wage is higher now than it was when I was working there.
3. The summer they employed me was one of the worst for movies in recent memory, so I could only use my free passes on winners like Planet Of The Apes, America's Sweethearts, and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.
4. Okay, the uniforms are still really awful, but they are less awful than the one I had.
5. At least he has a job. I'm currently unemployed and the last job I held was with Queen's Telefundraising (although frankly, I kind of liked it -- a lot better than the theatre job for sure).
6. Since I graduated, my love life has not exactly improved.

Kind of a mixed bag . . . maybe it was somebody else. Yeah. 85% sure it was somebody else. Because really, what are the odds?