Ohh wow, I learned fast. Soon I was begging my cash-strapped parents to buy me American Eagle sweatshirts and Adidas tennis shoes and tight flared jeans (which they didn't, I had to save my babysitting money). I kept makeup in my locker and put it on before first hour and wiped it off before I left. I started hiding my straight-A papers because B and L, the "coolest girls in school", considered it totally uncool to be smart.
And it was more than that. I started doing the thing where you would IM someone and ask them about Person A, and they would say something nasty to me, trusting me, thinking I wouldn't say anything, when really Person A was over my house and watching over my shoulder. I did the 3-way calling thing and managed to be really mean to a lot of people. And all the while I would still hang out with Laura and watch Disney movies and I hid all my Little House on the Prairie stuff under my bed so when B and L came over they wouldn't see it and make fun of me.
12 year old girls are bitches. I remember I saved my money for weeks until I could buy this blue-and-white American Eagle sweatshirt for $40. A few weeks later the same sweatshirt was on the clearance rack for $12. L looked at it at school and laughed. "Oh, wow, you paid like 10 bucks for that , didn't you?" I went home and cried.
Boys were a big deal, too, only there were a lot more cool girls than cool guys. It got to the point where people would "date" marginally cool boys just to be in the "in" crowd. I was really good friends with this one boy who was "dating" one of my good friends. He broke up with her and confessed his "love" for me. I was so flattered -- because he was probably the most popular boy in school, the best athlete, one of the cutest -- that I said I would go out with him even though it meant that my girl friend would get really mad at me. I hurt her feelings tremendously and I can't even believe I would do something like that.
Oh, and at my birthday party, B "French kissed" another one of my "boyfriends". And I was too much of a coward to say anything about it. Because she had the power to make me an outcast.
The best part of it all was that B was probably the least attractive girl in that group of people. She was popular because her older sister was a skank and did a lot of drugs, and her parents let them do whatever they wanted in order to be "cool" parents. I was awkward and skinny and had big front teeth, but I was smart and a good athlete and a good kid.
Toward the end of 8th grade I started hanging out with a girl I'll call Ellie. She was a very popular girl because she was cute and funny, but I liked her because she was probably as poor as I was and yet everyone still liked her. She was a great confidence booster. She always told me not to worry about B and L, and in fact we made fun of them a lot behind their back, even though it was pretty much just stooping to their level. The thing about Ellie is that she was honest with me. If she thought I was being a coward, she would say it. She stood by me one time when I told L that there was nothing wrong with my clothes and she was just jealous because I didn't have to study and still got straight A's. Ellie helped me a lot just by being nice.
In high school I got new friends (Ellie moved, but we still talk on occasion). Friends who were also smart and motivated. Friends who liked to have fun no matter how dorky it might look to others. Friends who liked me for who I was and not how expensive my sweatshirt was.
So I was lucky that I got all that horrendous coming-of-age shit out of the way at a young age. It helped me, in a way. I haven't felt horrible about myself since I was 13 -- which is a pretty good track record, I think.
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