Popularity

The following is my submission for the Writer's Post Blog Hop hosted this week by Jennifer Wilck at Fried Oreos.    

       Isn’t it amazing how time, experience, and the artful process of aging makes a person wiser and realize things in hindsight that it sure would have been convenient to know back in the day?  When I was growing up I would have given my future offspring’s nuts to be popular and well liked and have the golden key to the popularity crapper.  I was involved in lots of activities and knew a lot of kids.  In hindsight it may have been my personality and tendency to fly below the radar while keeping to myself that kept me apart from the popular kids.  I didn’t have the “look”, I didn’t talk the “talk”, and I was pretty independent in my thinking which meant I didn’t let others sway me.  I did my own thing and without even realizing it I kept to my own devices and skimmed the outskirts of the cliques.

 

      That didn’t mean that I didn’t antagonize about “why” the beautiful people didn’t welcome me into their numbers with open arms.  I honestly thought that there was something wrong with me.  In hindsight I realize it was their loss and something was probably more wrong with them than me.  It depressed the living hell out of me at the time though.    My daughter observes the “in” crowd as being rude and a tad obnoxious.  I laugh when she describes them as thinking they are all that with a bag of chips and on the whole prissy or idiots.  Obviously she is not impressed.  Several popular kids in the 6th grade are supposedly “going” together.  The smart ass in me wonders “Just where the hell can they GO when they can’t drive?”  Evidently the dynamics of “going together” has changed since when I was a kid.  Now the couple barely speaks to each other or is seen with each other.  Back in the day if kids were “going together” they were seen holding hands or standing so close to each other that it was a sure thing their personal space was being violated.  The girls drew hearts in their notebooks proclaiming so and so plus so and so.  You could tell they were “together”.  

        Bottom line, popularity doesn’t impress me much.  What does impress me is my opinion of the person or thing.  If I like them or it, that matters more to me than if everyone is doing it, if everyone else likes them or if it happens to be the “in” thing or “the“ person to associate with.  I may try it or extend friendship to that person, but if it doesn’t do it for me or I don’t like them I am apt to choose my own way despite what the masses think.  Everyone does the best they can.  There are billions of people in this world.  Chances are you are going to find somewhere to fit in with and be accepted for who you are.  In my book it would be far more important to be me than be a clone of whoever happens to be “all that” today.  I am an individual.  Every single person is a miracle of G0d’s creation and far as I can tell, G0d doesn’t screw up.  So with that in mind, everyone has something to contribute to this big ole world we live in.  What or who happens to be the most popular of all is simply what or who has the most exposure being the best it or they can be.  When people recognize those simple facts popularity begins.  Popularity can be a double edge sword though.  Those always in the spotlight show every imperfection in the glare and in the process offer themselves up for criticism.  When push comes to shove to hell with popularity, I would just rather be me.