Popularity

(entry for 8/14/2024)

I have never understood the concept of Popularity. I don’t even know what the word means, really.

Oh, I know what people use it to mean: being liked by a lot of people. But is that truly what it means? Or does it mean something slightly less positive?

A girl once ‘broke up with me’ because I wasn’t ‘popular.’ I was a Junior at my boarding high school, and she was a Freshman. My alleged unpopularity was only one of several reasons she could have chosen to use for her decision, but that’s the one she chose. I had dated her twice, and when I asked her a third time, she said, “I don’t think so. I want to go out with popular kids.” The unstated, and unnecessary, corollary being that I wasn’t.

She could have said that it was because I looked young for my age. People at first glance thought I must be in about the seventh or eighth grade. That could be uncomfortable for a high school girl on a date. Also, at that time I was rather short for my age. She was very short, and I was only slightly taller than she was. That could have been a negative, I suppose. Also, my ears stuck straight out from the sides of my head, instead of retreating back as most people’s did. Could have been a real turnoff. But she didn’t pick that.

Or she could have chosen as her reason the fact that she was a Freshman and I was a Junior. A lot of other people used that as a reason for shaking their heads at the not-quite relationship. But that’s not what she chose

The strange thing was, she wasn’t popular either! She had a best friend, a girl who was a year older but in the same grade. They were both from the same town, White Salmon, Washington. They were the only kids in the school from that area. They dressed alike, and it didn’t look good on either of them. Big flouncy solid-color skirts and black blouses with puffy sleeves. Neither one was slender to begin with, and their clothes made them look even less slender than they were. They kept their hair short, and curled, and dark. It was a common style at the time, but on them it didn’t work. It made them look poutish, somehow.

They had gotten into trouble in the eighth grade, and their presence at Laurelwood was widely held to be punishment for their misbehaviors. The exact nature of their transgressions was never revealed, but it was rumored to have to do with boys.

Ordinarily, having a reputation like that and being from out of state would have guaranteed them a certain level of popularity, but in their case it didn’t work. I never figured out why. By the next school year they had moved on to greener pastures, and I never saw them or heard of them again.

But the experience got me to thinking. I wasn’t popular; she was right. I knew I wasn’t. But it was somewhat of a mystery to me. In the fifth grade, when there were only eight kids in the entire school, just two of them were ever my friends, and eventually only one. In the eighth grade I was elected ‘president of my class,’ but it wasn’t because I was liked. It was because I got the best grades, and the other two people in my class thought that made me entitled. Also, our teacher pushed for my election, and they complied.

In the ninth grade I had only one real friend, out of a class of over a dozen, and in the tenth, only two.

So I knew going in, entering the eleventh, and at my first boarding school, that I was going to be on the outside looking in, socially.

Was it merely self-fulfilling prophecy, or was it more complex than that?

With the benefit of hindsight, I think it was more complex.

I didn’t know how to fit in. I had never known how, and I never would. It wasn’t that I thought I was better than everyone else, though some people assumed that I did think that. It wasn’t that I was smarter and got better grades (though I usually was and did) and that the fact was held against me. It wasn’t even that I was funny-looking or that I was small and babyish for my age, though I’m sure those aspects contributed to it.

No, I simply didn’t know how. Like riding a bike, though harder. Like knowing how to swim, though much harder. I simply didn’t know how to relate to other people my own age. In fact, I had a lot of difficulty relating to people of any age, though adults were generally easier than my contemporaries were.

For one thing, though I was pretty clearly a boy, I wasn’t tough. I cried easily. I liked dolls. I not only didn’t want to fight, I didn’t even know how to go through the motions. (The one and only time in my life I actually tried to fight someone, and someone a lot younger than myself at that, when I lashed out with what I thought was my fist, the kid’s nose somehow slid between my clenched fingers into the palm of my hand. It not only didn’t hurt him, it didn’t even affect him. At all. The other kids laughed. That was the end of the fight.) If a fighting situation arose, I simply retreated, before anything could even start. I was a coward, and, worse yet, I wasn’t ashamed of the fact. I did have a temper issue: I could get very angry, and often did. The anger almost always ended in tears though, and never in fisticuffs. Boys disdained me, and girls thought I was a sissy. If a girl found out I liked her, she would be embarrassed rather than flattered.

Once, in college, I ran for school office. I was defeated by a larger margin than any other candidate in the school’s history, before or since.

I both tried too hard and didn’t try hard enough. Let me explain the seeming contradiction.

Part of me cared a great deal. Part of me didn’t care at all. The part that cared tried every shenanigan it could think of to get positive attention. It almost always backfired, mostly because I usually chose a wrong-headed strategy. When someone who isn’t popular at the moment starts to break through the barrier, it seems to me to work best when that person rather sits back and lets them come to him. I could never seem to do that, though I did have opportunities. The other kids who were popular would give me a bit of wriggle room, and instead of being cautious and letting them court me, I tried to push my way into the limelight. That never works. Pushing creates resistance, and I didn’t have the skills to overcome any sort of resistance.

Also, the part of me that didn’t care at all showed through at the most awkward moments. Sometimes when I was subtly being recruited to ‘join the club,’ I would indicate indifference, not interest. This quickly killed any attempts to involve me, and I would end up even more isolated than before. Perhaps this was a ‘Freudian Slip’ on my part, I’m not sure, but in any event, the result was never what I was hoping for, at least not so far as I let myself be consciously aware.

If I had grown up in the seventies and eighties, rather than in the forties and fifties, I would have been called a Nerd, and indeed I did fit the definition of that term almost perfectly. I was bookish, in the extreme, and more interested in learning than in being handsome. I was goofy looking, not quite to the extreme of bug eyes, oversized ears, and taped-together eyeglasses, but definitely in that direction. I dressed funny as well. I insisted on wearing long-sleeved shirts and any kind of pants other than jeans. Whereas most boys my age wore jeans exclusively and insisted on short-sleeved shirts; they even could be seen rolling up what sleeves there were on the store-bought short-sleeved ones they were given by their mothers.

All in all, it was hopeless. When I cared, I did the wrong thing to show it. When I didn’t care, they latched onto that as an excuse for their negativity.

Now, looking back, I can see that I was pretty much destined to be where I am now: the few friends I have are really good friends, and I fortunately have even fewer real enemies, but the vast majority are in the ‘I guess I probably couldn’t care less’ category. Both ways. That’s how they feel about me, and that’s how I feel about them. That’s probably not how it should be, but that’s how it is.

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