20 years is a long time to lay claim to a label, especially one that describes who you were far more accurately than who you’ve become.

In my case it is a label that was correctly bestowed on me during my senior year of high school, when I was voted “Most Shy.” Back then, that’s exactly what I was. Anyone who remembers me at all from my school years remembers me as quiet, sweet, nice. My yearbooks are littered with these words from my classmates. Perhaps the sentiments were sincere (I would, after all, like to believe that I am nice), but I’ve always secretly suspected they were code for “I don’t really know you well enough to write anything else.” Yet it was almost certainly my own social fright that stood in the way of making deeper connections and lasting memories with the very people I had grown up with.

20 years can change a lot about a person, however, and while I will always be an introvert at heart, people who know me now are frequently shocked to learn that I was ever considered shy. Last weekend at my 20-year reunion I finally had the opportunity to demonstrate that to my former classmates. While it probably wasn’t enough time to change my shy image, it felt good to be free of the awkwardness that used to plague me.

I’m glad I attended the reunion. There were many people I was delighted to see—some of whom I wish I could have spent more time catching up with, and others whom I quite possibly spoke to for the very first time, ever. Even though we may have had little in common back then, there is that shared connection of having grown up in the same place and attended the same schools and known the same people that bonds us all together permanently. And that, dear readers, is kind of cool. Even, maybe especially, for the shy girl.