Monday

The High School Nerd Intervention


I am a little jealous of those who have great memories of their high school years and look forward to their reunions. Not me. I truly hated high school. I just did not fit in. To me high school was strictly for the cheerleaders and the jocks, no one else. Me? I was undoubtedly a first class nerd. My conservative upbringing certainly had a bit to do with it but basically it was just me. I was also a nerd in our church group. This was the late sixties, the years of hippies, Woodstock, the Beatles, free love, rebellion etc. None of that related to me. My idea of a good time was spending Saturday Morning in the library. I also enjoyed my alone time and being in the quiet library gave me that. Plus everything you ever wanted to know (in the days before the internet) could be found in the library. 5-6 books went home with me every week and I never missed a Saturday morning. Funny, to this day I have read few novels, with the exception of the classics, but devour self-help, history, psychology, sociology, biographies and autobiographies. To maximize the alone time and avoid the nerd baiters I walked to high school every day rain, snow or shine, never skipped a class or ever missed even one day of school all four years. I went to a fairly forward thinking high school that offered much more than the basics. My love of history was inspired by classes in Russian History and early Greek and Roman mythology for example. I also played the flute since the fifth grade and in high school played in the band and the marching band. In the marching band I also sometimes played the piccolo or the glockenspiel. 

It doesn't mean I had no friends. I did hang with those with similiar interests who also hated high school. We all felt trapped together in a place and world perhaps where we did not fit in. I guess my nerd quotient was even too much for them. One day the group got together "for your own good" to do what I guess nowadays you would call an intervention. They sat me down at lunch with the admonition
"if you ever want to be happy or get a boyfriend you have to do these things"

  1. dump the glasses and get contacts
  2. let your hair grow long 
  3. get out of the marching band

Well, I did want to fit in a little more and I certainly wanted a boyfriend so I gave it a go. 


So, I do get it that the after Ranae looks better in a late 60's kind of way. And I did get a boyfriend. True, the better looking you are the more dates you get. But everyone gets the same amount of love. Lots of other friends have expressed to me that they had the same insecurities in high school. It seems to me that if high school was the best years of your life? That's sort of sad isn't it? That is all a part of growing up, of finding out who you are and who you want to be.Today I am original Ranae again (just older and fatter) because once I got out of high school and into college things radically changed. I not only knew I was a nerd but I embraced it. The contacts hurt my eyes and I couldn't read well with them. Short thick curly hair is way easier to deal with than long thick curly hair. Mostly I am so so so sorry I left the band because I loved it, it made me happy.  

I wish I could have told my 16 year old self...
you are okay just the way you are, everything is going to be alright.