I was a Good Kid through my teens and into early college, but not in a pocket-protector kind of way. Not even in a preppy-clothes kind of way. No, having been an insightful and intelligent kid who'd already experienced possibly more than his fair share of hardship and depression, I was highly moral but not really socially "normal". Often times I was considered a goth punk, often times I was considered straight edge.

Mind you, I was not really either one of these. This was back before the Marilyn-Manson-popular-goth era, so there really weren't very many goth punks, and as I wasn't really part of any "scene" I didn't think it was accurate to call me goth. I did dress exclusively in black (I'd say "black is what I wear on the outside, because black is how I feel on the inside" and partly I meant it -- but also I just like the color), I did tend towards depressing-as-fuck music, even my movie and book tastes would often tend towards what people thought morbid or disturbing or just plain depressing. I think I recently pointed out that I was a music snob at the time, and overall I possessed a general disdain for most of what I considered "mainstream", though I don't think I would have called it that at the time.

But for instance -- as I said, I wasn't really straight edge. I had a few messed up nights with the few friends I kept, where we got drunk on Everclear* (*never again) and went around doing things like egging frat houses and breaking into campus buildings so we could go up to the roof. We even stole our state flags from this display that was at the heart of our campus, once (the display had all the state flags and the us flag) -- this required breaking in, getting up to the second floor walking out and around ledges, and then walking home with our ill-gotten gains when there's really nobody out except the police who would certainly disapprove of this behavior. All this while plastered on Everclear.

On the other hand, you could not have dragged me to an actual party. As far as most people were concerned, I never drank or smoked -- not even cigarettes, much less pot. And it wasn't that I was lying to people about my not doing these things -- it's just that I was only interested in doing them with a few people.

So yeah -- I just wanted to clarify that when I say I was Good Boy, I do mean in an overall sense. I mean, I honestly did have very high (if unusual) standards as far as what was morally acceptable, and I did hold myself to those standards with a great deal of strictness.

In fact, if I could send only one message back through time to my 18 year old self, it would be this: "Lighten up. You're taking life way too seriously for your age."

I was a good kid because I believed, as Emerson said, that "our every private act holds as much weight and importance as the most public of actions." Or, that there was never a decision that was not important -- what you did at any moment inevitably led you one way or another on the path of your life, so you really couldn't afford to not do what you should do at any given moment.