Popularity and Me

Was I popular as a child? Hrmm .... yes and no? I've never lacked for friends, and I was generally well known at school, but I don't know if you could ever label me as popular. In elementary and middle school I was picked on. My bully in elementary school had a name that had my own name in the middle of her last name. Even as a child, I knew there was something to that ... although I'm sure I didn't have the right word for it. Hell, I don't think I have the right word for it now, besides 'ironic.' But it was more than that ... I'm thinking something Greek ...

In middle school I was bullied by a group of girls in sixth grade for not shaving my legs. I'm sure there was more to it than that ... probably also had something to do with, and not having gone to the feeder elementary school. So I started shaving my legs, and generally staying away from those girls ... and that was pretty much the last time I was bullied. In seventh and eighth grade I found friends among the nerds, the slackers and the potheads (some of them were all three, I was just the first). I fit in, but I wasn't class president.

In high school, I was never bullied. In fact, I apparently stopped bullies. A friend has told me a story of when we were in senior year, that we had watched a couple of seniors throw a freshman into a trashcan and that I had yelled at the seniors and then helped the kid out. I have NO recollection of this, and in fact, question the truth of it.

Regardless, I found my niche in high school. In my freshman year, I assembled a group of five other girls, and we hung out a lot (the picture above is from a pool party of ... well, four out of the six of us). Our group did not continue, but I still had friends, and I was well known at school for being the 'Star Wars' girl - the one who wore her hair in Princess Leia buns for no particular reason around campus and who got up at four in the morning to get tickets to episode one.

I could hang out with any group, really - the theater kids, the popular kids, the ethnic kids. I spent my senior year as pretty much the only white girl around a large contingent of Asian girls, and I enjoyed myself. I amused them, I'm sure.

So I may not have been popular - but I survived with my sense of humor in tact. I think that's more important anyway.