Every little detail matters. Who your friends are. What classes you have. Where your locker is. What you wear. But most of all ... it matters who says hi to you. It matters who acknowledges you. And it especially matters if the uber cool kids from Grade 13 (OAC back in my day) say hi to you.
At least that's the way it was for me ...
When I was in Grade 9 I dreamed of being friends with the older and way cool OAC students.
(I was kind of like the main character "Christine" on that stupid sitcom "The New Adventures of Old Christine" in that I was totally obsessed with what other people thought of me and was of the opinion that what was on the outside mattered more than anything and popularity was my ultimate goal in life. Yeah ... shallow.)
Anyway ...
One particularly devastating day one of my friends and I were standing at my locker in an empty hallway. I was loading up my backpack for the remainder of the day when we heard some voices approaching.
I looked around the corner and saw that two of the coolest OAC girls were walking towards us. One of them, I'll call her Alice, was the coolest person I had ever seen. She was like IT. I wanted to BE her and I wanted her to like me and say hi to me and be all like "big sisterly" to me. She had the coolest clothes. She was friends with EVERYONE. She was athletic and musical and funny and pretty and she was nice. (I didn't know she was nice from experience ... she had never said a word to me ... but she didn't mistreat the "bottom feeders" the way the other OAC students did, meaning, she didn't slam heads into lockers as she went by or ask Grade 9's to give up their tables at lunch or in the library, so, in my opinion she was an angel.)
I crammed my books into my backpack so I could give the approaching Alice and "whatshername" my undivided attention. My friend just kept repeating "be cool ... don't do anything stupid."
(It's important at this point to tell you that I had one of those trendy backpacks ... ya know ... the green canvass ones with the two small pockets on the front and the big flap pocket on top and you only ever wore it over one shoulder and the other strap hung down ... I liked my backpack and was proud of the fact that it was the backpack of choice for those in the "in crowd".)
So as Alice and whatshername passed us by I swung my cool backpack onto my shoulder and simultaneously said "hi" and flipped my hair all to demonstrate how nonchalant and awesome I was.
And Alice looked at me and said hi. And I almost fainted.
I grabbed my friends arm and we quickly started walking in the opposite direction so I didn't do anything stupid to ruin the moment because I had suddenly jumped up in status BIG time and didn't want to burp or trip or vomit or do anything that would land me back in nowhereville.
As we walked my bag kept sliding down my shoulder. I was irritated but just kept yanking it back up. (I have small shoulders and generally things just don't stay up on them.) After a few more steps it started to feel like it was actually HARD to walk and that something was pulling my bag off my back. So I looked down.
There was a black piece of wool hooked around the strap of my backpack. I looked to see where it was coming from and saw that it went around the corner. I was trying to figure out what the heck was going on when I heard someone shout "what the??" from far around the corner.
And then I remembered that Alice was wearing a black wool sweater. And I almost DIED.
My friend put it all together much faster than me and ran away before I had a chance to beg her to stay.
I walked slowly around the corner and looked down the hall. A very angry Alice was stomping towards me with an armful of black wool and a half-unraveled sweater.
I was literally speechless. I just stood there staring at her and blinking and opening and closing my mouth but nothing came out. Sorry just didn't seem to fit given the level of destruction that had just happened to the sweater (that I could only assume was hand-knit by her great-great grandmother on her death bed) and offering to fix it wasn't quite appropriate either. So I said nothing. I just stood there.
She finally just said "thanks a lot looser" and stomped off.
I was horrified. My high school days were over before they'd had a chance to even begin. Alice had called me a looser. I had UNRAVELED her sweater with my backpack.
In keeping with my initial assessment of Alice she was rather nice about the whole thing in that she didn't ruin my reputation and write awful horrible things about me on the bathroom walls or try to trip me in the hallway or tape embarrassing things to my locker. But, she didn't talk to me or look at me or say hi to me for a long time.
She only started to talk to me when I was invited to go on the Jazz Band trip that year. I was the only Grade 9 to go on the Jazz Band trip which was pretty cool. But, during free time I fell out of my canoe into a freezing cold lake and almost died of hypothermia which was not cool at all and there was all this drama and I think she pitied me after that and started to say hi and stuff ...
And all I could think of for the rest of Grade 9 was what kind of person has this kind of misfortune ...
Seriously.
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