The color purple
I usually don't get too personal on this blog. Sure, I post personal stories and updates....but none of them are "too personal". I keep you, the reader, at arms-length. There are events happening in my hometown that are bringing up all sorts of too-personal issues for me. This post is a cathartic one meant to get all those thoughts out of my brain.
I'm a shorter than average, fair-skinned redheaded introvert with a sarcastic, dry sense of humor and quirky outlook on life. I always have been. My parents were a little older when they had me and they never parented me with baby talk. I grew up hearing big words and it was customary in my family not to have those big words explained. My brother and I both have fabulous vocabularies and a strong ability to figure out new concepts based solely on context clues. These are all really great qualities. For an adult living in an area where education and intellect are valued. Such qualities were not quite so valuable in my small, rural hometown.
In my hometown, as in most small rural communities, your last name mattered. We had one very large family that had kids or grandkids or great-grandkids in almost every grade level in school. This family descended from one set of parents who had 17 children. Those children all had their own children and the family grew exponentially from there. For the sake of simplicity we'll call this family the Ells. My class alone had three Ells. Their last name mattered and we all knew it. My last name did NOT matter. My last name was "Smith" and Smiths don't matter in the face of three Ells, especially Smiths who are shorter than average, fair-skinned redheaded introverts with sarcastic, dry senses of humor and a quirky outlook on life.
Things were pretty good in my hometown despite having the last name Smith...until fifth grade. Having worked in schools for the better part of ten years, I can assure you fifth grade is a bad year to be a kid. It doesn't matter where you live, whether your school is public or private, suburban, urban or rural. Fifth grade is just a tough year. My fifth grade year was no exception. In my fifth grade year it became really obvious that the Ells ruled the world. One particular Ell was the Queen Bee in our class and all the rest of the girls (and some of the boys, too) were wannabees (Read the book "Queen Bees and Wannabees" by Rosalind Wiseman for details). I'll call her Queen just to protect her identity and avoid a slander lawsuit.
In fifth grade Queen figured out she could play everyone around her like puppets on a string. She decided each day - sometimes several times a day - who was in and who was out. I was always out. For some reason Queen hated me, but she would never tell me why. Whenever someone was cast out of the in-crowd by Queen, they would always tuck their tail between their legs and come to me. I was like Switzerland and always offered aid to these social refugees. They would play with me and my friends at recess and have fun and laugh and they would seem like genuine friends during their time as cast-outs. But, then Queen would always decide to invite them back into the fold and, like good little wannabees, they would always come crawling back. When they went back to the in-crowd, they always resumed pretending to hate me so as not to anger Queen. On and on this continued for all of fifth grade and most of middle school.
Queen's hatred of me continued through high school and I continued to be rejected by most everyone in the in-crowd. I did have one good friend who straddled the line between the quirky kids and the popular kids. She was beautiful, but a little quirky. She was my best friend. Her friendship eventually opened the doors to become friends with a few of the kids in the in-crowd who weren't so afraid of Queen and the other Ells. I wanted so badly to be accepted by this group -- or at least not to be hated by them. My best friend helped me bridge that so I had at least a little acceptance.
As high school wore on, however, it became more and more obvious how different I was from these small town, small-minded classmates. They spent every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night drinking. A lot. The stories I heard on Mondays always involved tales of how drunk this person was or how funny it was when that person got into their car drunk and almost died on the way home. I didn't drink and, as the granddaughter of two alcoholics, I didn't find their stories that funny. Plus, since I was an introvert I had no desire to be the one sober person at their drinking parties. So I rarely ever went out to parties. I stuck to activities I could do with my close-knit group of friends (who also didn't drink).
I also had big plans for my life of moving away from my hometown, going to college and getting a good job before getting married and starting a family. This was definitely not the norm in my town. If you weren't engaged shortly after graduation you might as well get the scarlet letter "S" sewn into your sweater because you were most certainly doomed to be a spinster. I rarely dated in high school because I didn't want to wind up with any of the losers I graduated with and there were very few non-loser alternatives. I had no plans to give away my virginity to some guy who had already had sex with most of the girls in my school who didn't like me and I definitely had no plans to get pregnant by any of these guys. So, as you might imagine, I was extremely popular since I could add the words "teetotaler" and "virgin" to the list of qualities alongside "shorter than average", "fair-skinned" and "quirky". It all made me seem like some weird freak and, to those in power in my class, it seemed like a perfectly acceptable reason to make me feel worthless.
I graduated high school and went off to college and was surprised to learn that people actually liked me. They liked me just the way I was. They didn't mind that I was shorter than average or fair-skinned or redheaded or sarcastic or that I had a quirky outlook on life or a big vocabulary or that I didn't drink. They liked me just like I was and actually found my humor amusing and appreciated the quirky way I looked at things. They understood the big words I used and a lot of them didn't drink either. I was no longer a social pariah....I was accepted. One of my college professors had us take the Meyers-Briggs personality inventory and for the first time in my life I understood and accepted myself. Reading about the characteristics of a typical INTJ was like reading my autobiography. So much of my life seemed less like a mistake that needed fixing and more like who I was meant to be all along. In college and especially in graduate school I discovered how my unique wiring could open up amazing possibilities. I was able to experience some really cool things that would never have happened if I had been part of the in-crowd with dreams only of marrying young and continuing to live in my hometown.
What's funny as I look back on my life growing up, the people in the in-crowd weren't very interesting. Queen wasn't actually very pretty by any standards of beauty. She was a little "big boned" with wiry red hair. She was only an average student, average athlete and average singer. She wasn't funny or interesting to have a conversation with. Her personality was very boring -- aside from her controlling nature -- and she probably wouldn't have had very many friends at all if it hadn't been for having the right last name.
Most of the people from my graduating class have grown up to be okay adults who lead okay lives. Some of them are on my friend list on Facebook, but I can't say any of them are actually my friends. I avoid class reunions and rarely go back to my hometown. I hate the color purple (our school color) and only own one item of clothing that could even be loosely described as purple. When people ask me where I'm from I cringe a little inside. I might be from my hometown but I didn't really start to live until I left there. The few times a year I step foot inside the city limits of my hometown I suddenly feel unsure of myself, afraid I don't measure up, and worried about how my hair looks.
Right now in my hometown someone with the right last name (not from the Ell family, in case you wondered) is bullying the people into getting her way. In the process she is attempting to ruin my brother's life. As these events have unfolded I have been reminded how that used to feel. And I hate the time I wasted trying to be accepted by people with the right last name. It makes me want to scream from my rooftop about the injustice of it all and invite my brother to leave and really live the way I did.
I'm a shorter than average, fair-skinned redheaded introvert with a sarcastic, dry sense of humor and quirky outlook on life. I always have been. My parents were a little older when they had me and they never parented me with baby talk. I grew up hearing big words and it was customary in my family not to have those big words explained. My brother and I both have fabulous vocabularies and a strong ability to figure out new concepts based solely on context clues. These are all really great qualities. For an adult living in an area where education and intellect are valued. Such qualities were not quite so valuable in my small, rural hometown.
In my hometown, as in most small rural communities, your last name mattered. We had one very large family that had kids or grandkids or great-grandkids in almost every grade level in school. This family descended from one set of parents who had 17 children. Those children all had their own children and the family grew exponentially from there. For the sake of simplicity we'll call this family the Ells. My class alone had three Ells. Their last name mattered and we all knew it. My last name did NOT matter. My last name was "Smith" and Smiths don't matter in the face of three Ells, especially Smiths who are shorter than average, fair-skinned redheaded introverts with sarcastic, dry senses of humor and a quirky outlook on life.
Things were pretty good in my hometown despite having the last name Smith...until fifth grade. Having worked in schools for the better part of ten years, I can assure you fifth grade is a bad year to be a kid. It doesn't matter where you live, whether your school is public or private, suburban, urban or rural. Fifth grade is just a tough year. My fifth grade year was no exception. In my fifth grade year it became really obvious that the Ells ruled the world. One particular Ell was the Queen Bee in our class and all the rest of the girls (and some of the boys, too) were wannabees (Read the book "Queen Bees and Wannabees" by Rosalind Wiseman for details). I'll call her Queen just to protect her identity and avoid a slander lawsuit.
In fifth grade Queen figured out she could play everyone around her like puppets on a string. She decided each day - sometimes several times a day - who was in and who was out. I was always out. For some reason Queen hated me, but she would never tell me why. Whenever someone was cast out of the in-crowd by Queen, they would always tuck their tail between their legs and come to me. I was like Switzerland and always offered aid to these social refugees. They would play with me and my friends at recess and have fun and laugh and they would seem like genuine friends during their time as cast-outs. But, then Queen would always decide to invite them back into the fold and, like good little wannabees, they would always come crawling back. When they went back to the in-crowd, they always resumed pretending to hate me so as not to anger Queen. On and on this continued for all of fifth grade and most of middle school.
Queen's hatred of me continued through high school and I continued to be rejected by most everyone in the in-crowd. I did have one good friend who straddled the line between the quirky kids and the popular kids. She was beautiful, but a little quirky. She was my best friend. Her friendship eventually opened the doors to become friends with a few of the kids in the in-crowd who weren't so afraid of Queen and the other Ells. I wanted so badly to be accepted by this group -- or at least not to be hated by them. My best friend helped me bridge that so I had at least a little acceptance.
As high school wore on, however, it became more and more obvious how different I was from these small town, small-minded classmates. They spent every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night drinking. A lot. The stories I heard on Mondays always involved tales of how drunk this person was or how funny it was when that person got into their car drunk and almost died on the way home. I didn't drink and, as the granddaughter of two alcoholics, I didn't find their stories that funny. Plus, since I was an introvert I had no desire to be the one sober person at their drinking parties. So I rarely ever went out to parties. I stuck to activities I could do with my close-knit group of friends (who also didn't drink).
I also had big plans for my life of moving away from my hometown, going to college and getting a good job before getting married and starting a family. This was definitely not the norm in my town. If you weren't engaged shortly after graduation you might as well get the scarlet letter "S" sewn into your sweater because you were most certainly doomed to be a spinster. I rarely dated in high school because I didn't want to wind up with any of the losers I graduated with and there were very few non-loser alternatives. I had no plans to give away my virginity to some guy who had already had sex with most of the girls in my school who didn't like me and I definitely had no plans to get pregnant by any of these guys. So, as you might imagine, I was extremely popular since I could add the words "teetotaler" and "virgin" to the list of qualities alongside "shorter than average", "fair-skinned" and "quirky". It all made me seem like some weird freak and, to those in power in my class, it seemed like a perfectly acceptable reason to make me feel worthless.
I graduated high school and went off to college and was surprised to learn that people actually liked me. They liked me just the way I was. They didn't mind that I was shorter than average or fair-skinned or redheaded or sarcastic or that I had a quirky outlook on life or a big vocabulary or that I didn't drink. They liked me just like I was and actually found my humor amusing and appreciated the quirky way I looked at things. They understood the big words I used and a lot of them didn't drink either. I was no longer a social pariah....I was accepted. One of my college professors had us take the Meyers-Briggs personality inventory and for the first time in my life I understood and accepted myself. Reading about the characteristics of a typical INTJ was like reading my autobiography. So much of my life seemed less like a mistake that needed fixing and more like who I was meant to be all along. In college and especially in graduate school I discovered how my unique wiring could open up amazing possibilities. I was able to experience some really cool things that would never have happened if I had been part of the in-crowd with dreams only of marrying young and continuing to live in my hometown.
What's funny as I look back on my life growing up, the people in the in-crowd weren't very interesting. Queen wasn't actually very pretty by any standards of beauty. She was a little "big boned" with wiry red hair. She was only an average student, average athlete and average singer. She wasn't funny or interesting to have a conversation with. Her personality was very boring -- aside from her controlling nature -- and she probably wouldn't have had very many friends at all if it hadn't been for having the right last name.
Most of the people from my graduating class have grown up to be okay adults who lead okay lives. Some of them are on my friend list on Facebook, but I can't say any of them are actually my friends. I avoid class reunions and rarely go back to my hometown. I hate the color purple (our school color) and only own one item of clothing that could even be loosely described as purple. When people ask me where I'm from I cringe a little inside. I might be from my hometown but I didn't really start to live until I left there. The few times a year I step foot inside the city limits of my hometown I suddenly feel unsure of myself, afraid I don't measure up, and worried about how my hair looks.
Right now in my hometown someone with the right last name (not from the Ell family, in case you wondered) is bullying the people into getting her way. In the process she is attempting to ruin my brother's life. As these events have unfolded I have been reminded how that used to feel. And I hate the time I wasted trying to be accepted by people with the right last name. It makes me want to scream from my rooftop about the injustice of it all and invite my brother to leave and really live the way I did.
Comments