"i'm head of the class, i'm popular...my mom says i'm a catch, i'm popular...i'm never picked last, i'm popular..."

  a  glimpse into my youth: i started reading chapter books when i was 8.  i dunno if that's uber-advanced or not, but that's what i was reading.  my favorite books? sweet valley high.  i loved jessica and elizabeth wakefield. i idolized them.  i wanted to be them.  here was moi, fat, pudgy, far-from-perfect 8 year-old black girl in need of braces and glasses.  and i was wrapped up in their perfect, blond, children of Hitler world.  i wanted what they had. not the white skin, blond-haired, blue-eyed part because even at 8 my rents had done enough racial socialization to make me feel like black was where it's at, but i really wanted to be popular. yeah, an 8 year old. wanting to be popular. craziness. so, fourth through sixth grade i went and intentionally tried to make friends with girls i thought were popular.  yes, they did exist, even back then.  i'm 91% sure i was an ass-kisser, a hanger-on, a wannabe.  but they were all nice to me and i thought they were my friends, so i felt validated. i felt popular.  i had achieved my sweet valley dreams.  so what if they never invited me to their birtday parties or the random slumber parties they had? i was still "in", they were my real friends. i was sure of it. 

   in fifth grade i was put into the most popular fifth grade class in all of our elementary school (or so i thought it was anyways).  and i hung out with the most popular of the popular kids.  is it crazy that at 10, these girls were watching things like romy and michelle's high school reunion and sharpening their kitten nails into quick-swiping claws of death?  they were already talking about everyone behind their backs, saying truly hateful things when people weren't around, and smiling in their faces when they were. even their "best friends" they talked about.  yup, i hung out with two-faced ten year olds.  i don't recall if i participated in their self-esteem obliterating antics, although i probably did because i was that desperate to be popular and well-liked.  and i think i was.  i was referred to as "the nice one". i remember on the last day of fifth grade my teacher did this thing where everybody had a sheet of paper with their names on it, and we went around writing things to one another like "see you in middle school!" yeah. lame things of that nature.  most of mine was filled with the same messages: "you're so nice". over and over again.  when i got home and read it, i couldn't help but be a little disappointed.  i mean hello, didn't these people know me at all? couldn't they write something more than "you're so nice"? didn't we share fond fifth-grade memories?

     sixth grade everyone was assigned to a different hall than i was, so i basically had to make new friends.  i mostly made friends with the girls who were in my school's production of  romeo and juliet with me.  i was the nurse, and it was fairly easy for the girl who played lady capulet, the girl who played juliet, and i to become friends as well as the girls in the chorus.  they introduced me to official friend drama. let's just say the play had to be watched by the whole school, and this went to our collective 11 year old heads faster than hanson hit #1 with "mmbop".  lady capulet and juliet had the most tumultuous frienship.  one was jealous of the other, they both liked the same boy (romeo),  and they both always wanted to be the center of attention.  i played mediator between the two for most of my sixth grade year.  but even though they argued, they were still invited to one another's house quite frequently and had slumber parties and such. rarely was i involved in that.  once again, we mostly hung out at school. 

     i don't remember much of the summer after sixth grade.  i hung out with my drama friends maybe twice that summer, but spent most of my time at day camps and at home, reading and watching telly. the one thing i do remember was my epiphany.  i don't remember the exact details of when or how it happened, but suddenly i woke up from my popularity-induced coma and realized that i wasn't really being myself with these people.  there was a reason i felt like no one knew me, because no one did.  i wasn't being myself. i was more than just "the nice girl", and actually i wasn't that nice at all.  in fact, being the nice girl kinda sucked.  always having to listen to other people's problems and everyone brushing off my own, having to bite my tongue and smile when really i wanted to roll my eyes and walk away, constantly allowing people to "borrow" things and then never getting them back. umm...no. this nice girl deal? not my thing.  not at all. if being nice and well-liked meant i had to pretend to be someone i wasn't, that i had to follow certain unspoken rules about what was "cool" and what wasn't instead of just doing what i wanted to do, then i was gonna go ahead and throw that popularity thing right into the garbage with my barbies.  plus, none of my friends got my sailor moon obsession or my backstreet craze, and if they couldn't understand those two centric forces in my life, than clearly we had nothing to talk about.

     so by the time i was 12, i was done with trying to "fit in" or whatevs.  i understood that popularity did not bring happiness, just aggravation. when seventh grade started, i made real friends who are still some of my closest friends to this day, and i pretty much dropped out of the popular thing all together. and i didn't care either.  i heard their drama through the grapevine, and was happy i wasn't a part of it.  was my life a bed of roses? no, but at least i didn't have that one more pressure to deal with.  i finally got the glasses and braces i so desperately needed as well in seventh grade, and although i still read sweet valley high, i no longer wanted what i thought the wakefield twins had.

    to this day i don't really get why people try so hard to be popular, or why people crave attention so bad.  the fact that everybody and their mama wants to be famous in this society is kind of...pathetic. no matter how hard people try, not everybody's gonna like them. it is what it is.  and if a person can't find happiness within themselves and know that they offer something different and special and wonderful without the approval of others, then gaining that approval won't make them feel any better about themselves. it'll just turn them into cocky assholes who go around screeching "don't you know who i am?" yes honey. i know just who you are. the question is, do you? 

"every boy, every boy in the whole world could be yours, if you just listen to my plan, the teenage guide to popularity."