Adolescent lessons in dating and popularity

Adolescent lessons in dating and popularity

You can say that I was a misfit growing up since I didn’t fit in with others my age. My worldview evolved from a composite series of adolescent failed attempts and near catastrophes. I didn’t play or watch football or baseball. I spent time in the library reading esoteric topics like politics, psychology and new age books about Eastern religions. I didn’t like to join teams but was willing to participate with a small group of friends. I was friendly with the less popular girls but wasn’t attracted to them enough to date. None of us were the ones invited to kissing parties, but they did seem to know who was hooking up with whom. I didn’t care about the gossip. I couldn't believe what I heard on the bus when one of the catty girls complained, “I don’t understand why the boys like her so much when she has a face like a pushed in garbage can cover?” I couldn't believe someone could be so mean with jealousy. That was Ronnie talking about Kathleen who was in my grade. I thought that Kathleen was not only attractive, but she was nice to everyone unlike the mean girl, Ronnie. I knew that Kathleen was popular and I didn’t have a chance being more than just classmates with her, but she was never mean to me. Was it that important to be popular? Boys didn’t say such means things. They just would beat you up for no reason. Now I know that emotional pain can be more traumatic than physical pain. Emotional trauma lasts longer and isn’t so easy to recover from. I treat that issue in therapy all the time.

I think it was sixth grade when I first appreciated that some people were more popular than others and what it meant to be popular. I sat at a table that clearly had the less popular girls. They were nice and I felt comfortable sitting with them even though I didn’t always care about the conversations. Linda was age 12 taller and more developed than the others at the table. She looked, dressed and acted like someone’s mother. She wore glasses that had triangle wings on the ends with tiny pearly dots. She wore a long dress with a squared off front neckline trimmed with a little frill. She wore Mary Jane shoes. She had gone to the mother-daughter after-school sex education night meeting the week before. “You know why you should never look inside a girl’s purse?” she proudly asked me. I think the “you” was referring not only to me but all boys.

“No, tell me,” I replied matter-of-factually and really didn’t have the slightest interest in knowing but felt obliged to carry on the conversation. There were other girls at the table. Cheryl seemed more interested in the answer. She was less physically developed than Linda. She was shorter and closer to my height. She wore a blouse that resembled a tee-shirt but had flowers on the front and a neckline that revealed little. If she was wearing a bra it was only a training one so she could avoid the embarrassment of being one of the girls who wore only tee shirts. She looked intently at Linda. It was evident that her parents didn’t let her go to the mother-daughter sex education evening that Linda had attended.

“Well, you know that girls have to carry a spare tampon in their purse just in case they get their period.” She proudly pulled out one from her purse. Cheryl had an interested look, but I suddenly became focused on what was happening at the other lunch table. That one had the cool kids. It seemed that John was involved in some major planning exercise. He was at least two heads taller than me and had some stray hairs emerging from his chin. His voice had started to deepen but still had a goofy tone to it. He was older than most in our class as he had been held back in kindergarten. He was plotting with Jennifer who was one of the most popular girls in the class. Her breasts were protruding enough that you could see some cleavage through her V-neck blouse. They had decided that everyone in the class should pair up; one boy with one girl. Everyone should have a boyfriend or girlfriend since Valentine’s Day was coming soon. Suddenly it struck me, these were the popular kids and I was not one of them. I thought I should want to become one of them and didn’t want to be left behind.

I quickly left the table with Linda and Cheryl. John then noticed me and as if he suddenly realized his mistake he blurted out, “Oh yes, Rupert, who are you paired with? There is Laurie, she’s not paired up.”

I dutifully approached Laurie before it was too late and asked, “Will you be my girlfriend?”

She was soft spoken. She had beautiful dark brown hair and a shy smile. “Sure,” she said, “I think we are the only ones left.” In that moment it became apparent that the girls that I was sitting with clearly didn’t count. I never questioned why they didn’t count. They should have counted but in school and in the outside world, there are people who count and those who don’t. I wanted to count, but I didn’t realize what impact it had on those left out. It then struck me that I was also a last pick guy, but better to at least been picked than ignored. Everyone wrote their names of their pairings on a Popsicle stick. They had two sticks each with their names with an ampersand between them, “Laurie & Rupert.” Were those left behind not Popsicle stick worthy or now I would say maybe too mature to get caught up in childish games?

It was more of a game than a romance. I bought her a ring from a twenty-five cent candy machine. She bought me a box of heart shaped sweet tart candies with Valentine words on them. We sat at the same lunch table but never went anywhere outside of school. We were young and not ready for any relationship. I’m not sure if we ever even kissed. If we did it was on a cheek like parents do to their kids. A few years later, I passed her in the halls of junior high. She had matured into a beautiful woman. I appreciated that she would smile at me, but we never talked. She had her own friends who were more popular. She was a swan who owned the lake and could swim anywhere. I was stuck with the other ducks, avoiding the deep middle waters, staying in the shallows on the periphery of the pond. Was she my first failed relationship or a lesson about the hierarchy of social interactions? What makes people popular? Is it looks or physical prowess? That may be the stuff of youth.

I tried to find a niche where I could be part of a mainstream group. I joined the track team but didn’t like running much so I tried hurdles and high jump. That wasn’t so bad until I stopped growing and everyone else didn’t. The height got higher but I didn’t. I tried soccer but early on got my tooth knocked out by a more aggressive and determined player. The coaches and other players seemed to only care about the good players. So, it didn’t really help with creating a social support group. Just being on a team didn’t help popularity. You had to be good and needed.

These efforts weren’t for naught. All of these social failures helped me better understand the plight of the misfit. I developed empathy for the person who felt different or left out. I became a good observer of people and saw the games people played in order to fit in. I observed that some just didn’t want to fit in and maybe that wasn't so bad. I had no problem talking with some of the kids in the special education classes and even went on a field trip with them. I wandered the streets some days and met drug addicts and would talk with them. I was not interested in using drugs but found talking to them interesting. They didn’t seem to care what others thought about them. Sometimes I could just stand next to some individuals in different clicks and seem to be unnoticed. While other interlopers were mocked or beaten up, I managed to be the fly on the wall or even play the listening priest sequestered safely in a confessional booth.

One evening I was sitting on the bed of one of my male friends. Another boy decided to draw Venn diagrams of the social strata in the eighth-grade class. The popular kids were in the inner circle. Then there were the jocks in their circle which overlapped a significant amount with the popular kids. There were the freaks and druggies in their own circle which didn’t overlap with the circles of anyone else. After seeing these neat Venn diagrams, I asked my friend, “so where are we?”

“We’re just floating outside of all of these circles. Occasionally we might pop into a circle, but we’ll never be part of any group,” my friend said. We were swimming in the shallows of the periphery.

I don’t think I was as outcast as my friend perceived us to be. Being a good student in a suburban high school meant that I was in many of the same classes as other good students over several years. I could hang out with some of the groups due to this familiarity. As my friend had observed, “we might pop into different groups without joining.” I was invited to an occasional party on weekends but I clearly was not popular enough to be on the top of any invite list. I was more like a second or third string or back up invitee. I enjoyed watching and observing others, interpreting their behaviors. My friend decided that being an outsider was not where he wanted to be and encouraged a me to be his wing man in an experiment in becoming more extroverted. This became an exercise in developing better social skills in an effort to improve our social lives. We thought we needed to go outside of the school to meet girls since this would allow us to practice meeting strangers who didn’t know our social strata in the school. This turned out to be as much a game as the Popsicle match game.

I went to a local beach with this friend. His innocent strategy was to toss a Frisbee in the direction of an attractive girl sunbathing. This is how I met, Britta, a buxom beauty with long auburn hair. “Oh, sorry, it didn’t hit you, did it?” I bent down to pick up the Frisbee while admiring her cleavage. Her bikini clung to her smooth nubile skin without the excess rolls of fat seen on many others who should have chosen attire with more coverage. Sorry, I digress in my puerile sexism. She was attractive.

“No, I’m good.” She said.

“I’m Rupert, what’s your name.” I replied.

“My name is Britta.”

“That’s a nice name. I haven’t met anyone with it.”

“It’s German. I came here when I was six.” She didn’t speak with an accent. After some idle conversation she said, “I have to leave soon now. Would you like to hang out at the roller-skating rink this Friday. I go there almost every Friday. It’s a cool place to hang out.”

“Sure, sounds great.” We were both in tenth grade but attended different schools. I was excited at how easy it was meeting someone new, especially someone who was so attractive. My friends strategy was working. I didn’t think that would have happened if we knew each other in the same high school. I had to figure out the logistics of this meeting. I didn’t drive yet, so I had to ask my older brother to drive me there. I also couldn’t tell my parents which would have involved too many unanswerable questions, so I invented an alibi with my brother about going to a friend’s house who I knew my mother didn’t have the phone number for. This was my catch and had to go without my friend. I wasn’t the wingman for this encounter, so I was on my own figuring out the rules of social engagement.

When I arrived, she was already there. There was a blend of sweat and cheap perfume in the air. Strobe lights were flashing in rhythm to the loud music. She was dressed in a tight blouse which exaggerated her large breasts which were out of proportion to her fit slim body. She was a little shorter than me and I wondered if we looked good together. (Sorry again, there I go again focusing on the superficial physical aspects.) After a few loops around the rink, the fast music turned to a slow tune for a couple’s skate. I tried to start up a conversation with her. So, I began to ask her about school and asked, “Are you reading Catcher in the Rye like we are in school?”

She took out a piece of gum and began to chew loudly, “Maybe, but I don’t like reading.”

“So what subjects to do like in school,” I tried a different question.

She made another loud crackle sound with her gum. “Recess and study hall are my favorites.” She giggled a little.

“Oh,” Is all I could follow up with. I thought, “was she this shallow? How am I going to carry on a conversation with her?”

“Oh, excuse me, I have to go to the restroom,” Britta excused herself.

“OK, I’ll wait by the concession stand for you.”.

A young man with a dark brown stubble beard skated over to me. He was well built and muscular. He looked like a cross between a young Marlon Brando and Patrick Swayze. He had a mean looking scowl on his face and proceeded to intimidate me. “You’re with Britta, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Britta is some piece, eh? You’re not good enough for her. Hurt her, and I can’t tell you what I’m likely to do.”

I was frightened by the threat. I thought, not only was Britta shallow, she seems to have brought her own bodyguard.

When Britta returned from the restroom, she said, “Oh that’s Dominic my ex-boyfriend. he’s harmless.”

I wasn’t taking any chances, and her nice breasts didn’t make up for her shallowness. “I just realized that I have a lot of homework to do and should leave now.” I called my brother to pick me up early. That was that last I saw of Britta. I realized that I didn’t need to expand my social network to just anyone, we had to have some common interests.

From these experiences I learned to be content not being popular, or having a girlfriend as long as I was not actively bullied and accepted for my observer roll. For me now, I don’t need or want to be popular and am attracted more to people who have intellectual capacity and empathy. With this knowledge I have succeeded in finding the ideal wife and life partner.