Friday, June 1, 2012

...We were never friends...

I just finished my senior year of high school.  It was really weird...  For the whole last week people were crying about how they're never going to see anyone again.  Everyone was making promises to stay in touch and telling each other that they're going to go on and do great things.  It's not that I'm not going to miss my friends after I graduate, but I felt this weird sense of disconnect from pretty much the entirety of my class.  I didn't feel like anything was over, and I wasn't scared about the future at all.  I made no promises to stay in touch with anyone, because it doesn't feel like they're going anywhere.

On the last day of school, I had a math final, and I basically spent the entire day thinking "once I take this test I'll be finished with high school", and really looking forward to the end of the day.  After my math class though, everything got really anticlimactic.  There was this Senior Celebration that we had (?) to go to, and it was supposedly going to be really fun.  I was expecting a party in the hallways with cake, soda, yearbook signing, hugging, and crying.  Instead I got an assembly at which the six seniors who decided they were best suited for the task handed out paper-plate awards to the entire class.  I go to a small school, so it's only about a hundred and twenty or so people, but that's still an ambitious task for six people to undertake.
And for the record, some people say, "ambitious" and mean, "I'm really proud of you for thinking you'll be able to accomplish this".  That's not what I mean.  When I say, "ambitious" now, I mean, "you probably should have just stayed home today".

About twenty of the awards given out were really heartfelt and genuinely funny and made me feel like the six kids who made them really liked those people.  The other one hundred, though, were not that at all.

My award, for instance, was "Thespian".  Not even "The Thespian Award", which still is impersonal and lame but at least it still sounds like an award, but just "Thespian".  Like, "This Etsie kid, she acts or something".

Thanks, guys

So when they announced my "award" I stood up, smiled, accepted it, then shoved it into my bag and didn't think about it for the rest of the day.  In fact, way later that night as I was throwing away my un-needed school stuff from the year, I found it again, sitting in my bag.  It wasn't until I was about to throw it in the trash when I noticed they even spelled my name wrong.  "This 'Estie' kid probably has friends somewhere, right?"

So I took a picture of it and made a very angry post on Facebook.  One of the girls who made the paper-plate awards saw my post and commented on it. (Side bar, someone needs to teach me how to keep people who aren't my friends from commenting on my stuff.)  Here's the conversation:

Her: just so you know, we didn't come up with that one, the counselors did because we couldn't think of anything other than "actor".
Me: I just think its an ambitious goal for six people to try to make paper plate awards for a hundred or so people, and some of them didn't turn out very well.
But it almost makes me feel worse that the counselors also don't know me well enough to come up with anything better than "thespian".
Her: totally understandable but i wouldn't read too much into it. making a personal award for 100 people IS an ambitious goal so it's practically impossible to make each of them perfect. to be fair, the counselors had 1 day to do the ones we couldn't think of and we only gave it to them because we couldn't think of anything other than thespian. sorry you didn't get the award you wanted but i wouldn't read too much into it.

I didn't really know what to say to that...  I didn't read into it at all, and it's not the award itself that was bothering me.  I didn't know how to put that into words, so I just said this:

Me: I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying.

I left it at that, hoping either 1, she would drop it and go away, or 2, by the time she asked me to clarify I would be able to, and I would do so, and THEN she would go away.
In fact, after I made the post, I went to my room to paint my nails and ruminate, and when I did, I realized what I was trying to say.  I had been hoping that on my last day of school I would be filled with this overwhelming sense of camaraderie.  But apparently the six kids don't know me well enough to make me feel appreciated.  Instead of feeling included, like a part of something, this "award" for being "like an actor or something" made me feel alienated and anonymous.

Once I realized what I wanted her to understand, that is, how her impersonal "award" had hurt me, I went back to my computer to try to explain.  After all, no one wants to leave high school feeling like they're known for not being known at all.  I hoped she would understand.  When I got back, though, this is what I saw:

Her: probably. it's fine, let's be friends and graduate.

"Let's be friends and graduate"?  You've already proven to me that we're not friends.  You know nothing about me, and you can't even understand how your knowing nothing about me hurt my feelings.  You frustrate me to know end, yet you think we're friends, you think I'm just going to forget about this and "be friends and graduate".

I'm not even upset about the award anymore.  She insults me by giving me a "personal", in-specific award that could go to about twenty other seniors, too, then she takes it even further by being so presumptuous as to think that, even though she clearly doesn't know me at all, we're still friends.

While I was writing this post, by the way, I was also talking to my friend Brendon.  If you don't have someone in your life who always takes your side, but somehow can manage to talk sense into you and change your mind while agreeing with you, you need to go find one.  While I was at Northwestern, there was this girl who sucked, and I was complaining about her to Brendon.  She refused to kiss a guy for a scene, and I made an offhand comment like, "yeah but you have to, you're an actor".  Then, later, when I told my director that the phrase 'no homo' offends me and asked him if we could change it—and he was FINE with me changing it by the way—this girl said, "oh, you don't want to say 'no homo'? Well I would say it, but that's maybe just me; I'm an actor".  So I told Brendon.

Me: blah blah blah and basically she's the worst person ever.
Brendon: She's just trying to be cool. She's going to kiss him in that scene, but she's making damn well sure right now that everyone knows how much it's going to hurt her to do it. She's going to get to college and seek out other people like her to hang out with. They're called sororities. Those people spend all their time trying to be cool, instead of just doing cool stuff. It's like whenever I unicycle past two frat boys, and one of them goes "that guy's gay". I'm like "You're wearing an upside-down visor. You're standing next to another male, with whom you spend most of your time, yet a one-wheeled vehicle is a sign of a homosexual. It's an interesting theory you have there. One I don't quite understand, admittedly, but interesting. We should get together and discuss it over lunch."

He fixes everything, and just now he even fixed my paper-plate anger.

Me: I just wish they hadn't taken it upon themselves to try and prove that they know anything about me, because if they had asked my permission first I would have said "No, you know nothing about me".
Him: Ohkay so they're biased but they're also snot nosed high schoolers.  You want me to make you a new paper plate?
Me: Not unless it's something like "The only person who knows anything in her whole senior class, PS she's always right".
Him: Oh I like that.

Somehow blogging about this stuff makes me feel way better.  This girl who headed the paper-plate charge is obnoxious, and she's always bugged me, all through high school.  It was disappointing that she ruined my day one last time before I was rid of her for good, but at least now I really am rid of her for good.

I can't wait to go to college and make new enemies...