AIM used to be cool, you know.

Remember AIM? That instant messaging system with the little yellow man with a black outline? I think it's deader than MySpace, but it used to be a really huge deal. Especially with those kids kicking around the screens of their Sidekicks. It was this huge deal that we could IM from our phones.

I didn't have a sidekick in the eighth grade. But I thought I had a lot of free time. I knew my homework would take me all of five minutes.

I had all the time in the world to rush home, put Star Trek: Voyager on, and message this cute, very skinny, handball-playing, bass-wielding, boy with a skater boy haircut. I could literally message him from four o'clock to eleven at night about music and the news of the world and the last book I read.

Wrong. I thought I was too smart to be distracted by some dalliance with a boy when we both knew we were way too young to date. I thought I everything had so far under control, I didn't even have to think twice about what high school I would be attending.

Actually, I didn't think about it all, despite the fact that everyone around me was studying for the SHSAT like they were going to take it and its firstborn child, including this boy. I almost failed the eighth grade.

I did little to no work in my Earth science class, even though I'm pretty sure a total of five assignments were given the entire year. I cried in front of all my teachers. I nodded my head, I promised I would do better because I was better than what I was doing.

I learned then I was exceptionally prone to distractions, especially ones that made me giggle with just the quiver of a brow.

Have you ever made a mistake, and knew it was a mistake, thought about how dumb it was while you were doing it, and did it anyway? As if you never learned a thing? As if every time you did something, it was like you were doing it for the first time again?

As if every time you pushed your hair out of your eyes and made eye contact with milk chocolate brown ones, you saw all the things you were going to regret in his pupils, and then proceeded to do everything you knew you would regret.