The day of the 9/11 attacks, the incubus of dramatically predisposed teenagers in one building meant reactions were running high. I remember some scoffing,"They deserve it," some wondering if their Dad was there because he was away on business that week but they'd forgotten exactly where, and of course most of us were shocked, absorbing it and thinking out loud about what it all meant as we watched the same images on repeat on TV screens.

I wore my army-green "Make love not war" T-Shirt the next day. Everyone's favourite teacher, the one who told us how it "really" was out there, put his fist slowly in the air and said, "right on sister." Fiancé and I were BF and GF then and there had not yet been much talk about growing up, careers or direction. I was free to lament the soldiers who packed up and deployed. I was 15, a naïve sponge who absorbed the arguments of those around me. That included anti-war, down-with-terror, bomb China, and any of the others that followed in the days after.

It was easy to feel bad for military families then. A part of me even thought military wives had been conned into something, that they only followed their husbands around because they didn't have aspirations of their own. I thought soldiers who truly thought the war was unjust would do what my 15-year-old righteous, wannabe activist would do-stay home and refuse deployment in protest, of course. Three summers later, the BF enrolled in the military and spent a summer in basic training.

He has since left the military and is now training for the federal police force. In November, I will be a federal police wife and we will move around the country. I will tailor the household to his weird shift work schedule and be the housewife I once judged as a 15-year-old know-it-all. I was struck today by the turnaround in my ideas. As a disclaimer, fiancé and I have already decided that while he was being a cop, I'd gladly hold down the fort, and then once kids were independent, I'd go to law school and he'd bask in his early retirement. Or something like that, since I know a few wrenches are bound to be thrown in that plan.

I imagine no one stays the same as the 15-year-old versions of themselves. It makes me wonder, though, because I thought I knew it all back then. I had it all figured out, n'est pas? And now, I giggle at how opinionated I was for someone who'd hardly read the newspaper. I also furrow my brow wondering if 30 won't mean looking back and giggling at my twentysomething self, who also thought she knew it all, had it all figured out.