Miss Popularity

Reading about Cho, the Virgina Tech killer, and his social problems, brings up my own social ineptitude.

I've never been popular. Wait, I take that back, in elementary school, from kindergarten through fourth grade, I was best friends with the popular girl, so I was popular by association. Then came the first step in screwing all that up -- moving across town. Oh, don't worry, my own super dorkiness also came into play later, so I'm not blaming all of this on my parents.

Today, I was moving some books around on my bookshelf, and took out my yearbooks from school. I glanced at one from high school, then pulled down the ones from seventh and eight grade. For some reason, I neglected to get one in sixth grade. Seventh grade was a pit of despair for dorky old Laura. I had one friend in my classes at school, Sarah. I think that was step up from sixth grade, though, when I literally sat alone at lunch. Yes, all kinds of dork there. I usually brought a book and read through lunch. So, I suppose it looked like I preferred books over people. Well, I know I preferred books to actually having to approach someone and ask if I could sit with them. Can you imagine the horror? I did get lots of good books read that year, though!

Oh, and I did have younger friends I played with after school. It was just during school that I had trouble. I wonder what was so wrong with me that I couldn't approach someone, make conversation and sit with them, at the very least. I was always shy in school, even in Kindergarten. I remember my mother using the phrase, "painfully shy" to describe those days. And really, it is painful to remember. When I think back to those days, I wonder if I maybe had some "spectrumish" behavior going on. (Not to mention my days of COPE class in elementary school, AKA remedial PE.) Whatever it was though, I seemed to grow out of it by high school, when I was able to make friends. Well, I succeeded in making friends in eighth grade, as well, when we moved to Tennessee. Though being the "new girl" failed to make me the tens of friends I'd thought it would, I did connect with some of my fellow "gifted" geeks, but it really took me until high school to get the whole, "You can talk to someone BEFORE they talk to you" thing down. I just didn't seem to understand that friendship involves reciprocity - if you want someone to invite you to do something with them, often you need to invite them first. However, when faced with a group of non-dorks, or those less dorky than yourself, this is particularly hard. In high school, several people, upon getting to know me, would tell me they'd always thought I was a snob because I never talked to them.

Phew! I'm just glad I'm not in middle school anymore. Though, I think if I had to do it all over, knowing what I know now, I'd at least have become involved in some clubs or groups in middle school. I was uber-involved in high school, so seeing my seventh grade dork self in only two blurry pictures in the year book -- home room and band -- it really makes me sad for old self. Jeez, girl, why were you not at least on the Academic Olympics team? Oh, and I would have NOT cut my hair short in seventh grade, either. Pubescent girls who don't wear makeup yet should NOT have short, un-styled hair.

I did have some nice Esprit clothes in those days, though. So, apparently being well-dressed does not help with social ineptitude. It probably adds to the "she's a snob" facade I apparently had going in eighth grade.