Topic: Who Were You in High School? The Mean Girl? Or the Outcast?
{ Topic submitted by Stephanie P. from Adventures in Babywearing }
Cindy Thinks
Ally Thinks
I try to think back and imagine the girl that I was way back then, but I can’t really recall too much of anything (OY!). I know that would normally be a sign of someone suppressing a traumatic time in their life, but I had a great childhood, and from what I can remember…a fine time in High School. For me this is nothing new …my memory just sucks. I can hardly remember the details of the births of my children let alone the thousands of hours I walked the halls in my high school or the names of the kids I’ve known since the 3rd grade.
So, who was I in High School?
Was I popular? No. But I was cute…in an unremarkable kind of way. I was nice and fun to be with, but not popular. More like “middle of the road” on a scale of having no friends…………….to being popular. And, for the first year or so, I wasn’t loyal to (or was it that I really wasn’t a part of?) any one group in particular, but sort of glided around the edges of many.
And then I met…“the boys in the band.”
They called themselves “Oakfield” which combined the names of the two towns the boys lived in. And they made me feel like I was finally a part of a group. And I liked the bass player. And he liked me.
And he had amazing long hair that flowed down to his shoulders and hung in his eyes when he closed them to play the bass guitar, and in High School…that whole musician with the long hair thing was a pretty big deal.
So, for a long time in High School…I was unremarkably cute, with a boyfriend who had amazing long hair, who played in a band. And, because I was hanging out with boys in a band who DIDN’T EVEN GO TO MY HIGH SCHOOL…it also made me kinda cool.
But I wasn’t popular. I didn’t do sports. I didn’t have particularly good or bad grades. And I didn’t consider myself to be a “joiner.”
In my Senior year however, I decided to join the “backpacking club,” which was made up of a small group of kids who were into hiking and camping. As a Jewish kid from the suburbs who had never hiked before (later I found out it was just walking on dirt), or gone camping (I did go to “camp” for 5 years…but it was a high-end Jewish camp where they unpacked your clothes for you before you arrived…so it wouldn’t really qualify as a “camping experience”) it was really a kind of mysterious and almost rebellious thing for me to join.
So imagine my surprise when they nominated me to be their Homecoming Queen candidate. I hadn’t even gone on any hikes or camping yet! But I was flattered…and a little confused. I didn’t really fit the typical mold for a Homecoming Queen. But as the two boys who organized the club explained to me…that was the point. They didn’t want a “typical” girl to be nominated for the Homecoming Queen from the backpacking club…they wanted a typical “backpacking girl.” Aha…that explained it. I, apparently, had backpacking girl written all over me!
Which I thought was pretty cool.
Unfortunately, my elation at being labeled as a backpacking girl was almost immediately shot down when I was called into the principals’ office after he heard that our “float” for the homecoming parade was a little red wagon…complete with towering cardboard buildings with colored smoke pouring out of their tops depicting the rampant pollution being poured into our atmosphere by Corporate America (which I do credit as the start of my early political career). He was not happy. He firmly believed we were trying to make a mockery out of the Homecoming Event and threatened to pull our Club from the whole thing.
OMG…I had NEVER been in trouble in High School before. I was a pretty good kid. Some would probably say too good a kid. I always respected authority and followed the rules, and if I didn’t, I didn’t get caught…except for the time I got caught smoking within 1 foot of the “no smoking” zone and they called my mom, but that time it was really about getting in trouble with my parents, not in school.
I talked my way out of the situation by claiming that we were not in any way making fun of the sanctity and tradition of Homecoming…but rather, we were expressing our views about our love and respect for our environment, which was pretty cool back in 1974! And he bought it.
So following the big Homecoming football game, we were allowed to roll out our little red wagon with it’s colored smoke pouring out of the top…while I followed behind sitting atop an old Mustang (we tried for a cool jeep, but nobody owned one in suburban Michigan at the time) dressed in matching denim over-alls, flannel shirts, and yes…backpacks, with my date (the boy from the band) feeling and looking pretty damn cool.
I didn’t win as Homecoming Queen. BUT NOW I was an unremarkably cute member of the Homecoming Queen’s Court… with a boyfriend who had amazing long hair, who played in a band.
Other than that…I didn’t have anything else I was known for, or for that matter, any identifiable talents at all. I didn’t excel at anything. But I didn’t fail at anything either.
So I guess at the end of the day, I was…pretty average.
I was an average student, with average looks, an average number of friends, who did an average amount of “stuff”…in High School.
Who was I in high school? That’s a hard question to answer. My gut reaction is to say, “fuck if I know”, but that doesn’t really make for a compelling answer, does it?
I spent a lot of high school in my head. It’s kind of a lonely place, in your head. I just thought a lot. I listened to music a lot. I watched a lot. I didn’t speak a lot. As a result, lots of people called me stuck-up and rude (which is really helpful and totally awesome). Others called me shy. I was just nervous. Though “just nervous” doesn’t really cover it. I worried about everything and anything. I was nervous about getting bad grades, about writing papers, about what people would think of my clothes. Turns out I have a pretty severe anxiety disorder that was WAY out of control. In a sense, I was paralyzed by fear. My nerves kept me from doing anything. And the truth is, I just accepted that and decided that I didn’t WANT to do anything. I didn’t really want friends. I didn’t really want to have fun. As a result, I never snuck out to meet a boy, I never took my parent’s car for a joy ride, and I never got drunk in the bathroom at prom (though I can totally name names). I just kept my head down and my mouth shut.
I was always defined by my relationship to others. I was “that girl’s friend” or “that guy’s prom date”, or “that really awesome kid’s sister”. (I’m still “that awesome kid’s sister”, but I’m okay with that). I was never really “Ally”. Because of this, it’s hard to say who I was in high school.
This also meant that I didn’t participate in anything.
I never played sports, because competition mixed with physical exertion scared the shit out of me (still does). I remember going to my counselor my freshmen year and asking to be excused from Freshmen Fitness (HELL ON EARTH). It was required for all students, but I was so freaked out by it that I went and asked if I could get out of it. My counselor asked me why this class made me nervous. I said I didn’t really know. Then she asked if my parents were divorced. I said no and she just sort of shrugged and let me take another class instead. So, I guess the lesson is that your parent’s marital status influences your athleticism? Or your anxiety around team sports? I never found out, but my parents are divorced NOW, so who the hell knows what THAT means for my future in physical education.
(Not that I’ve put a lot of hopes and dreams into PE or anything, but now I feel like I don’t even have the OPTION.)
(Just another thing I can blame my parents for.)
I’m not good at art, either. Most kids like me are able to find a niche in high school by painting or drawing or building sets for the school play. Not me. My drawing skills have not improved since I was 4, and the only painting I truly enjoy (or am good at) is the kind you do with your fingers on a table your mom covered in newspaper.
I dropped out of band and color guard (you know, those girls who twirl flags). See?! I was so much of an outcast that I didn’t even fit in with the band kids.
I once went to a meeting for the Amnesty International Club, but that was because a cute boy named Mike was going… and he just went for the free pizza, so that didn’t really last.
(But stalking the cute boy TOTALLY PAID OFF. It’s the best thing I did in high school…)
Needless to say, high school was a bit depressing (except for said cute boy). Weren’t these supposed to be the “best days of my life”? Someone once asked one of my favorite teachers that, and he said “hell no… I promise, life gets better than this.”
And I gotta say, that made me feel a whole lot better.
And he was totally right.
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