A while back I watched Paper Towns, a movie which I would have loved had I been a 16-year-old girl. This is a fact that can be validated by the fact that I watched it with a friend, who believes that it is socially acceptable to have a Hello Kitty case on her iPhone, who seemingly enjoyed it a fair bit more than I did.

For those who have not seen the movie it is set within the last few weeks of high school and the adventures that ensued. I could go in more depth about the plot, but I think for our purposes any mental image you construct will suffice.

At the conclusion of the movie I started to realize that that whole chapter of my life is over; the experience of being called a soccer-mom for driving around an old minivan, the anxiety of finding a prom date had been experienced, the post-graduation road trip across the country had happened.

I also realized that I was probably one of the oldest guys in the theater. That is when it finally hit me that I was no longer a kid in high school anymore and that chapter of my life was over. It is a weird feeling and I don’t know quite how to describe it.

And then last night I saw Ferris Bueller’s Day Off once again, which for those of you who don’t know is  a heartwrenching tale of how a gorgeous Ferrari 250 GT meets its fate.

I realized that on various occasions I had missed school to do every single one of the things that Ferris does on his day off. Maybe I did get what I was supposed to from High School after all.