Originally published in Joy of Medina County Magazine, Sept. 2018 (see below)
Every school year, when I was a kid, I would be excited at the chance that this year would be different.
I let myself have hope that somehow freshly sharpened new pencils with unsmudged erasers and clean paper in undented folders would change the world.
That this would finally be the year that I would feel smart, the bull
ies would have forgotten about me, and somehow a miracle would have happened, and I would be Popular.
Then one year, it finally did happen, for one whole school year.
I learned something that year. I knew I was the same as I had always been. I was too stubborn to have become like the popular girls to gain popularity.
Later, I would realize the change had come because of the huge party I had thrown in between our freshman and sophomore high school years. I had invited almost the whole class, making sure the popular kids were invited because the boy I had a crush on was part of their crowd. I was not having the party to gain popularity, I was focused on planning to tell the boy how I felt (it did not go well, but that is another story).
On the first day of the following school year, suddenly I was recognized as worthy by the Popular Ones, and the bullying stopped. In my puzzlement, I realized I had bought my new status.
As I enjoyed my new popularity, I could see with sudden clarity how shallow and unimportant popularity really was.
It was then that I understood what adults had been telling me all along: In the long run, popularity in school means nothing.
The miracle year ended and so did my popularity, but it no longer mattered. I had realized the side of the room I had come from was so much the richer in texture and experience and that the friends I had there were real.
High school and life are not really about who is popular, that is just the façade used as a distraction and held in place by those who are too scared to know themselves.
Being popular is not the lesson, the lesson is what you learn about yourself and what you choose to do with that knowledge. Too many are so busy maintaining their social status or trying to improve it, that they miss the lesson.
High school and college are far behind me now. I have watched as my children chose their paths and I tried to teach them what I had learned. As with most lessons we teach our children, I will not know if they learned it until I see what they teach their children.
In the end, being brave enough to be yourself and being kind is all that truly matters.
Blackboard photo by JESHOOTS.COM