I'm a product of the early/mid-80's, the era of $30 Izod shirts, $50 Jordache jeans, and $50 Topsider shoes (all in 80's prices, I might add). The pendulum had swung far right from the "free to be" 70's and non-conformity was met with the cruelest form of bullying: shunning. Hollywood mocked us with The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Some Kind of Wonderful. Alex P. Keaton was our poster boy. And we were known as the Preps.
I started high school as a "Freak": concert shirts, flannels on top, bandana-clad thighs, and Levi's 501s. I was even known to sport a feathered roach clip in my hair. Even though the legal smoking age was 18, my high school had a smoker's lot and us freaks could be found there lighting up, and not just cigarettes. We were the orphans: abandoned and discarded. Our shelter was each other.
One day my dad picked me up from school and announced we were moving. To a "better part of town." That weekend. I was ripped from my harbor and set to sea adrift. Worse, mid-year.
Knowing absolutely no one, possessing neither money nor straight honey-blond hair and good skin, my social status was worse than persona non grata - I was simply "persona non." Eventually, though, I found a few other ghosts in my purgatory and drifted through that first year.
When I became noticed by a few girls at my bus stop during my junior year, I leveraged their semi-cool status and jump skipped the freaks and the geeks. I was now on the fringe of the popular crowd. Not quite in, but close enough that I was acknowledged in the halls and a buddy when they needed homework answers. I didn't even notice that I no longer noticed the wisp of friends from the previous year. Poof! They no longer existed.
My junior year was thrilling. Football games, cool clothes borrowed from friends, and a bravado that comes from "fitting in." When my beautiful, petite and blond best friend started dating the beyond cool star defensive football player, I not only fit, I felt I had arrived. Jamming to The Scorpions and Boston in the coolest ride on campus was exhilarating. It didn't matter that I was a break up away from the fringe, I was "in" - if only as the tag-along.
(to be continued)
