Homecoming Queen

Date: Sunday February 24, 2008
Posted in: Blogging, Friends

Leah here, writing my first! ever! guest post in almost five years of blogging. How did I manage that? Am I unlovable? Do I smell funny? Am I wearing the wrong brand of jeans? Why doesn’t anybody like me?! WAAAAAH.

I know it’s not a popularity contest but, gosh, doesn’t it sometimes feel like one?

As straight-forward and transparent and wonderful as blogging can be–like the best friend you’ve known since kindergarten, who can see to the heart of you, both the good and the bad, and still love you despite–it is also a strange and mystifying beast, one as likely to offer a shoulder to cry on and a hand to hold as to sprout an extra head spined with gnarly horns, a aureole of flames, and a mouth spewing just the right combination of consonants and vowels (and exclamation points and ALL CAPS) to have you cowering in the corner sucking your thumb and crying for mama. See also: trolls, blog angst, and, what luck!, the previous post by Casey.

Blogging is a unique experience because its hybrid personal journal/public performance form is so unlike–and so much more than–other forms of personal journaling and public performance. And yet, as different as it is from anything else, at least that I’ve ever known, it’s also at its core just another folk community, and not at all immune to the dynamics, and politics, we experience with our families, with our coworkers and, most pointedly, with our in-real-life friends. Get a group of bloggers in a room together and they’ll talk about blogging; get a group of bloggers talking about blogging and eventually someone will compare the “blogosphere” to high school (or even junior high), and never in a good way.

Although the blog communities I frequent are generally populated by women and men of a certain age and of a certain maturity, even the best of us have squirrelled away inside ourselves an urn containing the ashes of our former, teenaged selves. Although we are now older and wiser and, hopefully, more sure of ourselves and thus more immune to the slings and arrows of our peers, deep down we still want to fit in, we still want to be liked, we still want to be voted into homecoming court, if not also crowned queen (and given a tiara and a bouquet of roses, and borne across the football field on a litter carried by beefy football players, and allowed to skip gym for a week). In blogging as in high school, there are definitely A-listers, in-crowds, popularity contests, and awards, and unfortunately those are the very same things that also beget losers, outcasts, and the distinct sensation that you’re sitting alone in the cafeteria with your stupid balogna sandwich and your stupid imitation Girbauds while all the cool kids are at another table talking about the rokcin’ party they went to last weekend that, of course, you weren’t invited to. Thank goodness that in blogging most of those feelings of unworthiness are only in our head: even though it sometimes feels like the real deal, chances are you are not being rejected, shunned, or slandered. No one is literally dangling you upside-down over a toilet.

I did okay in high school. So okay I even *gasp* liked it. I had a small but reliable group of friends, I was involved in a variety of clubs and activities, and all that time I devoted to homework would have easily won me valedictorian had (1) Stephen Reynolds not been an unqualified genius and (2) Heidi Clark not maintained a perfect GPA by taking only easy classes. Still, although I didn’t finish at the very top of my class, I won a bunch of academic awards, was editor of this, president of that, and graduated with a sigh that was equal parts relief and satisfaction–not an easy balance to achieve considering the (social, emotional, hormonal) tempest those years can be. High school was just that–high school–and I moved on without baggage or regrets.

Save one.

I never got the popular vote. At the end of my junior year, I campaigned to be Student Body Activities Coordinator (basically, the keeper of the calendar) and lost to a guy who got arrested in the school parking lot the week prior for reckless (wreck-full?) driving. He might as well have been arrested for being too hot and too funny and too popular because he was all of those things as well. So why in the world did I–not hot or funny or popular–run against him? Because he was stupid and I was smart, and I thought smart was what The People wanted in their Student Body Officers. (I know; apparently I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was.)

After I lost that vote, I ran for Senior Class Secretary and, yup, lost to another hot, funny, popular, stupid guy. And thus I entered senior year not entirely dispirited but very, very wary. Three weeks into first semester and we’re nominating homecoming queen candidates–one for each club or organization, as voted by their members–and although I’m not sure I have a good shot at the nomination, I at least have many shots. I am editor of the literary magazine, I am copyeditor of the newspaper, I am secretary of the literature club, I am vice president of the environmental club, I am on dance company, in the swing-dancing club, in the cast of that year’s musical. I am friends with the band geeks, the basketball teams (girls and boys), and the drill squad, hair extensions and fake bakes and all. I even have an authentic pair of Girbaud jean shorts. How could I miss?

But miss I did. No nomination, no glittered sash, no tiara, no litter, no gym exemption. Heidi Clark, future co-valedictorian, got nominated, but due to some grand cosmic glitch, she didn’t even get asked to the Homecoming dance and showed up alone (and won fourth-runner up, I think). I felt smug about what I was able: At least I got asked to the dance. At least I had a boyfriend.

But still…

Why do I still remember this crap, a dozen years later? Why do I still feel a little pang in my chest when I think about it? After college, I moved out of state and hardly ever saw anyone from high school–least of all the popular kids, who seemed to have disappeared into domestic anonymity–so why does the experience still hang on a hook in the back of my mind the way my (incredibly short, oh my lord) homecoming dress still hangs in the back of my closet?

I think because it was the point at which I realized that being smart/responsible/prepared/qualified wouldn’t make a homecoming queen out of me (we’re speaking figuratively now) and, loathe as I was to admit it, there was something in me that really wanted to be homecoming queen, and not for the sparkly accoutrements but because it would be undisputable evidence that I was liked. In retrospect, it’s a silly thing to want, and on some level I knew it was silly even then. Who needs evidence and public acknowledgment when one has her friends and knows she is liked–and for the right reasons–by the people who really count? But OH how I wanted that evidence.

When Angella asked me to guest blog for her this week, I had to make sure I hadn’t just opened a tub of Imperial margarine because *doo doo doo DOOOO* (about 7:32), suddenly my head felt heavy with the weight of a crown. She likes me! She really really likes me! Not that I ever doubted Angella liked me (she likes everyone; Best Blog Citizen Ever; sunshiny rainbow kisses, etc.), but to me being asked to guest blog was like being invited to the cool kids’ table, bologna sandwich and all.

And that’s the part of blogging that keeps me coming back every day. I know that by putting myself out there not everyone will love me, but I also know that if I am True and Real, someone, somewhere will at least like me, even if it’s just my mom and some nice girl in Canada. My high school had brick walls and 1,200 students; my blog community is the world, and in it are millions of potential friends. I may never get hundreds of comments on a single entry, I may never be asked to blog for money, I will not turn my blog into a book, I will not win every award (I will probably not even be nominated for most of them), but my older, wiser, post-high school self knows that’s not what it’s about. For me, blogging is the place where I can show up in my crappy clothes (or robe and slippers) and no one will point and laugh. It’s where no one cares what I had for lunch. It’s where I can say what I need to say, for myself, and maybe in the process make contact with people who get it, who get me. All the rest of it–the contests, the cliques, the conference (are you coming?)–is just gravy. Wait…not gravy–sundae toppings. Whipped cream…fudge sauce…chopped nuts…and a cherry.

Thank you, Angella, for being my cherry.*

*Regular readers of my blog, please admire my restraint re: cherry and the easy innuendo I have let slip away in the name of maturity. This is me, growing up before your very eyes.

**Someone tells me comments aren’t working. Not sure what to do about that. Heather???

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