“Mom!”
Societal Suicide—
“Daaaa-ad!”
Public humiliation on the noblest level—
“I need to go to the movies NOW!” “I need to get that new shirt NOW!” “I need those new trading cards NOW!”
One word describes it all: Popularity.
It is the bane of existence for every teen in part of our realistic society. Isn’t that how adults view it? It becomes politically correct to wear see-through clothing, midriff tops and barely-able-to-cover-their-ass shorts. It’s PC because everyone views popularity as the end all be all.
If you thought it was okay for Sylvia to be five minutes late to her “friendly” gossip ridden haven, then you are the reason she’d become a living organism inside the much despised high school hell. Hell was a scary place for the preteens and teenagers. For every person inside of it, it was full of ridicule, humiliation and an unfathomable ability to never love oneself.
Did you really want to be the reason little Jeffery was misplaced and abused throughout the rest of his schooling. That’s sure a lot on your plate, huh? Is it possible for you to even imagine what it must be like for little Brittany to go through such a horrible dilemma because of you?
To me, it always felt like everyone strived for this inner circle of fake smiles, stupid laughter and plastic cards. My confession time: I was a loser. Though depending on the age, especially those god awful lanky preteen years, I’d never have admitted it.
But, I, Ashley, was a loser. In fact, I was also a super smart nerd who every bit of information seemed to come easily to. And let’s not even mention the stereotypical suck-up geek. I was part of the incurable and undesirable high school hell. The funny part is that I, personally, loved it. Not in that weird gothic, “I live for negative attention because it is better than no attention”, kind of way. Not in the classic Eeyorean attitude where I have to accept life as I know it because I would never be able to change it if I wanted to try. So what was the point anyway? And not in the lying way that most people right on the edge of the popularity circle pretend they don’t care just so that they don’t feel even worse for themselves on a daily basis.
In fact, it was easy to love high school hell like I did. All I had to do was find my perfect group of friends. They had to be crazy. They had to look hilarious together. They had to be “out of the box” thinkers and they had to pressure you.
NOW WAIT ONE SECOND! Did you really just read that right? Isn’t peer pressure bad? Well, if you ask me, no. I don’t think it has to be. It can be. “Take a hit of this.” “Everyone else is doing it.” “Let’s go get DRUNK!” “God! EVERYONE has sex before they finish high school! What were you thinking, Ashley?” Those are some downright awful pressures.
But I needed pressure. I always had my head buried in a book or my thoughts among the clouds. I had the strictest parents, I think in the entire world. At least, that was always how it seemed until I met Tony. Because of them, I was always on a strict schedule: Dinner by five; after it got dark I had to be inside; and bed time was eight at night, even on those summer nights when it was still light out. I needed to stick my toes on that line that I was also told would make me burst into fire if I ever crossed. Did I cross some and get burned when I shouldn’t have? Well, sure. But I also learned to trust my own judgment and realized to feel the heat of the problem before I spontaneously combusted. How many times was I told not to worry? I couldn’t count the amount of times I was told to stop thinking just for one minute. And I should “just do it”.
If I ever did stop all my constant thinking, I would feel as free as the “get one” part of the “buy one, get one” deal. That was until I realized I still had to buy something to be free. That was the point where I would worry all over again.
I was in a certainly crazy crowd. My parents always assumed I was, but they didn’t know half of it. We snuck out, we messed things up in the neighborhood, and we shot paintball guns. We had the cops called on us for walking in someone’s grass, magnetic bumper stickers and curfew. I have been taken home twice in a cop car and watched my friends wriggle around in a bag hoping someone would call the cops on “the infamous bagman”.
Oh, sure. It sounds stupid as hell if you never tried it. (Even if you did, sometimes it was—no, most of the time it was—pretty stupid. But I was taught and advised more the nights I was with them then I did all my life. I learned the best way to unwind wasn’t to pop open a cold one but to laugh until I was considered insane. They taught me what it felt like to help someone for the first time, when they needed you and I learned to not give a shit about people that don’t give a shit about you.
I didn’t enjoy high school. Classes were boring. I could sleep through them and get B’s. (Not something I ever truthfully did, which looking back, I cannot even believe). However, if you think I paid attention, you have another thing coming. It was like telling a fifty year old to watch Sesame Street because there were some great life lessons they could learn from. I would seriously hope, even the average fifty year old, knew the life lessons we teach four year olds. But my friends gave me the best advice that I never asked for. They taught me to survive life and how to love myself.
Sure, I yelled for my mother and my father. I demanded leaving on a moment’s leave for the movies. But it wasn’t because Carrie would downright murder me if I didn’t trash talk by the door for thirty minutes. My reason was because Jackass just came out and we needed new material to work with and laugh at. We needed something new to help us continually enjoy our hellish stature.
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