Hi?

I recently acquired the email address of one of my old high school teachers; actually the word “recently” is a stretch because I actually got the email about a year ago but forgot I had it. Oops!! Anywhoo, I have no idea how to write an email to the man. This guy was one of the more influential people in my life and even though I haven’t seen him in 7 years, for some reason I don’t want to come off the wrong way. For some reason I am worried that I will somehow disappoint him. What does that say about me though? Deep down am I still the same insecure teenager I was 10 years ago?
Sometimes I remember the conflicting looks I received when I got my first job. The excitement that I was finally contributing followed by the disappointment that I was wasting my potential working at McDonald’s. I might as well have told ‘em that I was going to be killing puppies for a living. It’s not like I sit around thinking about these things, but they definitely never go away.
It is not like I feel I have anything to be embarrassed about. I may have flamed out of USC the first time around, but seriously, I wasn’t ready for it emotionally or academically. If I owe anyone an apology for all of that it is my mom, and only because at that point it was still her money being spent. I can’t regret the flame out though. Had I gone straight through school, I never would have discovered how much I enjoyed and excelled at working with children, many of my friends would still be strangers, and I definitely wouldn’t be wearing an Army uniform right now.
Maybe it is more an apprehension about what right way to reconnect with someone I haven’t seen in nearly a decade. I have recently “run into” all these people from high school with things like MySpace and Facebook. It is one of those things where I am excited that all these people are alive and well, but damn, I have no freaking idea what to say to them. I guess a simple “Hi” might work. But that seems like the sort of thing that the insecure teenager would have said 10 years ago.