Time warp! You are 18 and just graduated from High School...

Go to college, travel, stay away from any long committed relationships that require settling down until at least 30.

I am right there with you, I have traveled a bit but just got out of a year relationship and am ready to go on a big six month trip. I say the 20's are for figuring yourself out best you can before we decide who we want to spend our lives with.

Thanks for the reply!

make sure I stay in touch with the friends who made me happiest

#this?

Maybe try to search them on facebook or other social media outlets?

Enlist in the Air Force and spend the next 20 years doing routine maintenance on thermonuclear warheads. Retire before age 40.

In retrospect? I should have stayed in the army. If I reenlisted, I was going to change MOS from 13B (cannon crewmember) into military intelligence. That would have been a great way to spend 20 years into retirement.

Well that sounds interesting, are you part of the Air Force now?

Yeah that sounds like it would have worked out well for you, what did you end up doing when you got out of the army?

No. Never joined the military. A career maintaining nuclear warheads never occurred to me when I was young enough to join, despite my always being fascinated by them.

I did consider a career as an officer in charge of a nuclear reactor in the Navy. But once it dawned on me that it would not be much like LaForge or Scotty on the Enterprise, and would instead involve sitting in a hot boiler room reading gauges, with everything being pretty boring unless I was about to die a horrible death, it lost its sense of adventure and I declined to pursue that path.

Yeah! I regret having lost touch with some really great people.
Happily, I have managed to reconnect with a lot them.
Ain't technology grand?

I've reconnected with quite a few but some are just missing.

One died just before FB allowed me to connect with his mother and sisters - I found out he'd been killed in a meeting at work - we insured the vehicle that killed him - 20+ years after our last letters - 'we are here to evaluate the value of the life of X' . I had to leave the room.

It really is! it is amazing how much more connected we have become in the last 5 years

I finished high school when I was 16.

And not because I was smart or with a great IQ but because my mother got a job when I was 4 and asked the elementary teacher if I can be in his class everyday without being included in the list of students. The teacher agreed and I started my education very early. On the next year, the same teacher told her that I must continue on the next grade because I did well the past year.

After finishing High School I opted for mechanical and architectural drawing as my next step. I found new friends in my new class who made me forget about the high school friends in a short time spam.

I remember my biggest mistake which I have never repeated it again in my life.

I went back to visit my former school at the middle of the following year.

A few things changed, The uniform was different. I knew this in advance because was announced in my last year in that school. One third of teachers retired so new faces filled up the school pedagogy.

Not having my school friends around I felt practically alone and lonely. And I said to myself "never more".

Finishing high school too early is not good, you still are a "child" for the rest of people anyway regardless of diplomas and stuff like that.

But, if I was 18 finishing high school, then Carola might have put her beautiful eyes on me... maybe not, but she liked older guys, and I should be at the corner around her house playing with friends waiting to see her passing by and talk to her... She was a kind of tall, and I was about her size when I was 16... no chances at all... what a misery... life is not fair...

I quit this time warp!