My Five Closest Friends – Part 1

[Editor's note: Natalie is the Poet Laureate of Seed.  She is a Penn State undergraduate majoring in Communications, is an active member of everything, and likes to drive editors crazy by including unusual typographical symbols in her writing.  Enjoy.]

Wait a second…

I have always heard that one’s five closest friends added together, give or take a few complimentary idiosyncrasies, mixed up, and spit out—personality, humor, charm, morals and all—equals oneself.  Because truth is, we choose our friends based off of these criteria.  If we don’t smoke, any smoker “friends” we may have are probably better titled “acquaintances”.  We bond with who we relate to.  To what degree this is true, I know not.  But I have been an inhabitant of this earth long enough to know that most of the time, it proves to be true.  One night I sat on my bed pondering all of this.  I thought about all the cliques in my high school and how alike those within each clique were.  They were all on the same sports teams, went everywhere together, loved the same movies, laughed at the same kind of humor.  I thought…and I thought. 

Then I thought, why am I so different?

My five closest friends, if you could even call them that close, were among those called “high school drop-outs,” “depressed,” “boring,” “awkward,” “anti-social”.  As far as I knew, not to be too presumptuous here but, according to my standards and the standards of my family and the standards of society, I was none of those things.  I’m in college, certainly not a high school drop-out.  I’m too in love with life to be boring, depressed, or anti-social.  And I can only hope that I’m not awkward, but I could be wrong ☺.

All that said, if I am nothing like my five closest friends, different from my family (that’s even more complicated), and not the human concoction studies have made me out to be, then who am I?

Whose spitting image am I?

Second day of high school.

I walked through the maroon-colored cafeteria doors.  My heart stopped.  Not again, I thought.  Why do I have to go through this horrible process of finding an eating area where only embarrassment and silence seemed to emit from my soul?  Gosh.

I dragged myself over to the lunch line.  I was one of the few whites who bought lunch.  Social mistake number one. 

After I got my oh-too-sloppy joe, I headed over to the condiments table, stalled a bit.  A bit longer.  And longer, scoping out the tables to see a kind face, a nice gesture, an inviting hand.    No one.  Nothing.

You see, I was not like Yvette and Mildred in “The Wrong Lunch Line,” by Nicholasa Mohr.  I had no best friend.  No one to sit with.  Not a soul.

Then I saw them.  Perfect as could be, I thought.  Why not join them?  If I sit with the popular people, maybe I’ll become one of them. 

My heart raced as I made it over to the already over-crowded table.  There had to be at least 15 girls sitting at this single 6-foot diameter surface.  Social mistake number two.

I squeezed in with them, not really saying much and ignoring the sideways glances. 

Why do you hate me? I thought.  Just smile…maybe they’ll like that.

So I smiled.  And smiled.  And my upward grin turned into an awkward line as I listened to the silence.  Most of the girls had already finished eating.  Except for me, of course.  Social mistake number three.

Two girls waited up for me.  Nice enough, right?  Not really.  The next day was the same story, but no one waited for me.  I felt the embarrassment that Yvette felt when that teacher called her out in front of everyone.  I felt like I had done something out of my place.  Like I didn’t belong.  People were calling me out for it with their stares. 

That day I found a note the girls were passing around about me.  “Please don’t let me cry, thought Yvette” (Mohr, 55).  Please don’t let me cry, I thought.

It hurt.  Really bad.  When people write that you’re weird and you have no friends and that they don’t like you in high school, you believe it.  It tore my insides apart.  I could not function for the rest of that day.  I was like a zombie, one with too many tears to hold back.

I nearly jolted home. 

That’s when I got down.  On my knees, I mean.  In front of my window, right at the foot of my bed.

“God…”

Tears ran down my cheeks.  Tear after tear and soon I was bawling.  I couldn’t breathe.  Who was I?  Why was I?  What was I to do?

I looked up and saw the answers.  I listened and heard the answers.  I knocked and the door was opened for me.  Social mistake number four .