So for some reason it’s been nagging on me at the back of my head, but I gotta explain what the previous phases of my life were. Okay, here goes:
Phase One (Birth to Fourth Grade)
Andy runs around a lot and plays in the dirt.
Phase Two (Fifth and Sixth Grades)
Andy realizes that people have different personalities, and begins actually forming friendships and, to some extent, antagonisms. Andy continues to run around a lot.
Phase Three (Seventh and Eighth Grades, Freshman year of High School)
Junior High introduces Andy to lots of other people his age, Andy begins to get this concept of what girls are all about.
Phase Four (Sophomore High School)
Andy begins making new friends, many even of that scary opposite gender. Andy develops his first very strong infatuation. (Which, sadly, still lingers in the depths of his subconscious.)
Phase Five (Junior in High School)
Andy begins to understand the greater workings of the school, the politics, the cliques, the system, and tries to maneuver himself around within it, moderately successfully. The concept of “The teacher is not always right” begins to emerge.
Phase Six (Senior in High School)
Andy becomes part of a very complicated social web, but not nearly as much as he’d like. Numerous social dead ends provide trauma sufficient to last many years hence. Andy realizes that one of his many infatuations is more than the rest, as it involves interest in the person, not just the appearance. Realizing it doesn’t make it hurt any less when it doesn’t pan out.
Phase Seven (Freshman and Sophomore in College)
Andy is forced to make many new friends, and realizes this is a fresh new start. Of course, he is too comfortable in the role he played in High School, and rapidly falls into the same groove he left behind him. Andy meets the girl of his dreams, and is too chicken to do anything about it.
Phase Eight (Junior and Senior in College)
Andy gets a new job, moves out of the dorms, and begins integrating into the social circle that he remains a part of to this day. Andy tries to further relations with the GoHD but fails due to lack of follow-through. Andy lives with different sets of housemates, and finds the situations tiresome… but then again, some of the housemates were real characters.
Phase Nine (Current)
Andy gets a job and moves out to his own apartment. Andy lives alone, five miles from work. Commute is nothing, work continues to be some happy-happy Internet paradise, life seems a perfect dream, which of course doesn’t last.
Phase Ten (Pending)
Andy moves back into a house with housemates. Work begins “restructuring”, if not officially yet. Work moves to different campus.
So, there are many other intertwinings in there, constants between the phases, but that’s the framework. And forgive me for not naming names, but… you know.