Overly Serious Reminiscence

I was thinking about being back in the sixth grade yesterday. It struck me that the people who I wanted so very much to like me then- the people who I tried with all my heart to befriend, with no success- were really nobody special at all. I say that not because I failed, which would suggest that to salve my feelings I am to this day misrepresenting good, fun people. Rather I say it because years later, it's easier to see things then objective. The hindsight helps.

I couldn't for the life of me say what ever became of those people. I do know a little about the people I was friendly with then, and they seem to be doing well. They were more the misfits. They were the inveterate genre movie fans, the guys who lived on Taco Bell. It was in sixth grade, I think, that I realized they were who I was.To that point I fancied myself some kind of athlete, fit to hang out with the cool kids. By the time I had gone on the middle school, I had wised up.

It too longer to realize that I'd had the dynamic entirely backwards. You don't see while in school that the value placed on things gets up changed up later. The cool kids turn out to be other people. I have no idea anymore why I imagined those kids who spurned me to be the cool ones. They weren't inordinately smart, funny or attractive. I must have been under the influence of captivity or something, the way you behave strangely in a casino where you're removed from all signs of what time it is or what's happening outside.

The people I was friends with then and the people I am friends with now are just worlds better than the ones I wasn't. One of the many reasons I wish I could go back with the knowledge that I have now is that I'd like to not even try to win those people over and just feel great about it. I don't know that I was even anything special at the time myself , but I curse myself for the countless dire hours I spent wringing my hands over being on the outside looking in. I was the one who was in and had no idea.