It's Opposite Decade

So I'm going to start this off by giving you a scenario, a very real scenario that repeated itself way too often throughout my childhood, and I want to know if this ever happened to anyone else.

Imagine you're sitting in your classroom, most likely elementary school. Let's say 4th grade. Life has not yet beaten you down. You inevitably have an "-ey" added to the end of your name. You still think D.A.R.E. is cool.
Ok, maybe not the last part. but you get it.
Basically, are at your desk ready for a full day of school. Or so you think...
After a normal morning of pledging allegiance and roll call, your teacher suddenly announces it's time for the big test.
Your heart stops dead in your chest. Your blood turns to ice. You suddenly have to pee really really bad. Your mind is devoid of every rational thought save one:
"WHAT TEST?????"

If you were anything like me as a child, items like tests and homework projects were always sneaking up on you, mostly because you spent most of class daydreaming, or reading, or doing some other way more important activity. This is all understandable, comprehensible, not a bit reprehensible, all defensible, whatever.
But for some reason I always seemed to bet the only one. In the entire class, I was the ONLY one who had not studied for the test, or brought in my field trip form on the last day, or written that paper that was assigned right before the bell rang, etc.

I always thought that maybe it's because I was on a different plane than everyone else. My parents and teacher used to call it Racheland. Once I was gone, man, was I gone. It usually took someone calling not only my first name, but my first and last together a number of times before I finally acknowledged them with a groggy "huh?".

I've gone through most of my adult life thinking that somehow, everyone was paying attention when all the life lessons on how to be a functioning adult were given out, except me. Or that the life how-to memo landed on everyone's desk, but because I was on a water break, they skipped giving me one. Whatever stupid metaphor I could come up with here, the result is the same:
I feel everyone knows how life goes except me.

However, I am starting to think that maybe it's not that I didn't get the memo, it's just that I was scheduled to receive it at some other time. It's not my life that is out of whack, just my schedule.

1st case in point: during the first two weeks of school, most of my time would be spent reading all the short stories and full novels (seldom poems) in my literature textbook for that year. Yeah, I was that kid. Not because I was obsessive, but because I loved reading, and couldn't wait to see what other stories were lying in wait for me. Plus, I would have all the required reading done for basically the whole year, and due to my ridiculously good memory (it has faded somewhat since then, but apparently when I was a kid my memory scores were off the charts) I would retain it for the whole year, and never worry about reading homework.

2nd case in point: I was absolutely, I'm sure, the last girl in my grade to be kissed, to grow boobs, basically every puberty milestone you can think of. I even had braces till the week before senior prom because I had to wait until high school to lose all my baby teeth. I was 15 when I had my first kiss. Summer before sophmore year. At camp. For a Jewish girl, where else?

These are two opposing examples that prove the same thing: I was way off the schedule that dominated the norm. And that was all before college.

To speak more currently but less specifically, I feel I have gone through much more emotionally than many other members of my age bracket. I have had more life experience, and I know it shows. Most people don't think I'm 23. Unless they catch me watching a Disney movie.
I feel like I got my midlife crisis over with in my early 20s.
On the other hand, I have never done my own taxes. I didn't even know what equity really was until like, a month ago. Not the most mature thing, I know.

And one odd example always stuck in my mind. When I first got to college, I was immediately wrapped up in the throes of my first truly serious relationship. (Moment of nostalgia for first love. Ok, done.) All my friends were dying to know how it was. And I had no problem sharing, and ending each romantic epithet with "You'll find it too someday!"
Fast forward a couple of years, and I was going through my first real heartbreak, the one where you learn that if you care enough, you can actually feel your heart physically hurting. And those same friends who I had giddily shared stories with were all entering their first big relationships.
And, of course, all dying to tell me how right I was.
For some reason, ever since then, with this same group of friends, my love life schedule has always been completely opposite to theirs. When I'm breaking up, they're getting hitched. When I'm getting hitched, they're breaking up. A short while ago, I got a new boy in my life, and I recently learned 2 of those friends broke up with their significant others of more than a couple years. These events happened basically weeks away from each other.

Spooooooky.

Strange as it may seem, taking this scheduling theory seriously is actually quite comforting to me. It doesn't mean that I'm never going to learn how life works, it just means that I'm gonna do it on my own time. True, I am writing a blog at 3 in the morning the night before an early day of work, but hey, I did get boobs eventually. Who knows how I'll grow up next!

So if you share this feeling with me at all, don't despair. Although you may not be ready for the test today, you'll know the material when it really counts.