On Popularity, and the genesis of Frange
Alright... it strikes again... just finished watching the second half of "Can't Hardly Wait."
Again.
Whenever you're done laughing and pointing... read on.
Aside: After writing this; this is a long one. Go put that frozen meal in the oven now... you know.. the one that you haven't eaten because it tastes like crap if you microwave it but it takes like an hour to cook in the oven... that one. It's gonna be a while.
In my opinionated... umm.. opinion... they make these kinds of movies, and more importantly, they succeed despite being fluff, because we all relate to them in some way.
Now, of course I know how I relate to this movie. I was Preston. I was the geeky kid that always knew that if only I could "get in," I would be a great guy for a great girl. I saw beautiful girls that I had big crushes on just get crapped on by indifferent stereotypical jock types.
Aside: Of course, being a high-school aged kid, (and despite being, at least what I thought was pretty bright for my age,) I didn't always know who the "great girl" was; and truth be told, I often would think that unless I had distinct evidence to the contrary.. the "hot" girl was also the "great" girl. I've learned since then that almost all women have it in them to make themselves irresistably attractive to a guy who's curious about them... if they want to. :)
Now, though I just kind of made a stab at it, what makes girls (or guys for that matter) popular?
Since last time I checked, I wasn't a girl, nor was I girl when I was in high school, the only person I have extensive knowledge on is myself, so pardon me while I replace what should be some quoted social science research results with another nostalgic recollection that likely suffers greatly from exaggeration.
As I've said in one of my few previous posts, I grew up (and actually still live) in a very affluent town. The one public high school in town gets a LOT of funding, and is truly an amazing place.
Aside: To put this in perpective, the "Student Center," which basically is a multi-purpose area that serves as a cafeteria, place to socialize, and sort of the "center" of the school; is a one-acre square with a fifty foot tall ceiling.
Combine such a large socializing area, and many students (2500 or so when I went there, about 2700 now) and you can imagine that the clique formation is ridiculous.
So much so, that you can be really popular in your little microcosm... but still be a "nobody" as far as the whole school was concerned.
Weird huh?
So basically, even if you were a total geek, a bespectacled skinny kid who played Dungeons & Dragons and video games at every opportunity, (ahem, *cough* me *cough*), and growing up as a geek, you grew to despise popularity and doing things just to be popular, you could still find friends.
So, I had found my clan of fellow geeks, and unbelievably, we had girls that wanted to hang out with us too.
Aside: If only we knew how lucky we were, that at that particular (magical) moment in time, groups of girls would actually seek out guys.. and have their standards so low so as to find the group of self-esteem challenged misfits to which I belonged (that were members of the school's *retrospective snicker* "Strategy Club") acceptable guys to hang out with, and inevitably, go out with.
So, being the Preston-like kid I was, whenever I wasn't playing video games or Dungeons & Dragons, I was dwelling on the fact that, as much as I loved my friends, I wanted a friend to love.
Nature threw me a bone; I went from being a 5'8" skinny kid to a 6'2" not-so-skinny kid, in less than two years during high school; and looked decidedly less like your prototypical dorkus-maximus as a result.
I embraced theater as a new passion, especially comedy. I had always been a pretty funny guy, doing impressions pretty well, and though I wasn't a "thespian" (we actually had a "thespian" club that you needed to be invited to get into) I would be featured in the school's Improv shows regularly as the resident character comedian.
Aside: If you've actually read my previous posts, you can see how my aforementioned, but-now-defunct, theater company started; it was some of my buddies and I from the Improv Troupe that wanted to do summer theater.
So......
Me not looking like Urkel + Being relatively funny = Popularity
Popularity + Girls that didn't have other, better looking, guy friends = Get the Girl
I got the girl.
She was hot.
I lost my freaking mind.
My first "real" girlfriend (I'm not counting the kissing on the playground and passing notes girlfriends in elementary school, or the fake "wedding" ceremony after school girlfriends in Middle School) was an odyssey that spanned 4 years of on again-off again mental peaks and valleys. Being such a sheltered kid, I was the goody-goody that didn't want to smoke or drink or try pot or anything; doing stupid crap that might get me in trouble was something I just steered clear of, and I was pretty harsh on people, especially my friends, who did that stuff.
But there was no way I stood even a ghost of a chance against a certain vice when I was 16, with all the hormones that come with it, and my girlfriend was cute and actually wanted me.
Aside: You hear talk about guys not being able to think with the head on their shoulders when another head is involved; well... the ominous "they" (who apparently hold dominion over the world as we know it), are right.
Things might have been great, if she didn't have a little compulsive lying problem, wasn't the impulsive ying to my methodical yang, and I wasn't so helplessly attached to her and the high I got from her when things were good, that I didn't even realized the depth of the hole (read: mindfuck) that I was in.
Aside: Damn that lack of self-esteem; I really thought that I had no chance to get any other girl; and to this day, I have issues trying to "break the ice" with a girl. I have no idea how to say in a non-creepy way that I'm a totally decent guy that wants more than anything just to make a woman smile a real smile, and have it be all my fault.
Anyways... I could go on for far too many therapy sessions on my high school sweetheart.
Back to the topic at hand. Popularity.
So, within my clique, I was popular. I was the funny guy in the group. I even got a nickname that was a spoof on my last name: "Frange." I was even referred to as "The Frange" often, like I was the Fonz from Happy Days. It felt really good... I didn't even have to jump a motorcycle over a tank of sharks to keep my friends.
But... beyond my circle of friends, large as it was, and the people that saw my Improv Shows, nobody knew me.
Now; you might say, "Naw... you just didn't think people knew you.. they did."
Well, naw.. they didn't.
Fast Forward to end of Senior year, I'm anxious to pick up my yearbook, since Seniors get a bigger picture and you can put a quote under it. Silly sounding now, but it was a big deal back then.
I get my yearbook, and my last name is the same as one of my friends instead of my own, and my quote is completely missing.
Ouch.
The reimbursment of my yearbook purchase price, and a stack of little stickers with my right name and quote to hand out to people just didn't cut it for me.
Why was I so upset?
The people who mattered, my friends, they got the stickers and they knew. Why did I care about all the 400+ other people in my graduating class?
I realized, I cared about being popular. Not just popular to my friends, but popular to everyone. I wanted to at least cling to some possibility that people knew me, and when, in ten years, (yikes, which is next year) they glance at their yearbook and know who I was.
When I look back at my yearbook now, I'm completely indifferent about people that weren't my friends. I mean sure, I have memories about a lot of the people in there, but when I put the shoe on the other foot, I realize that no one gives a crap about me; and if anything, my strange circumstance of having my (wrong) last name be out of alphabetical order on the page, and my lack of quote might actually draw MORE attention to me than it would if everything were in place as it should've been.
But why should I care?
Why do we care about crap like this? Why do people get their proverbial collective panties up in a bunch about people we have so little contact with? I know I go way out of my way so that someone like a waiter at a restaurant doesn't think I'm an asshole.
Super-Sized Aside: I know this is totally off-topic... like I stay on topic ever... but I have it on good authority from a lot of ladies out there that women as a whole do NOT like the word "panties," to the point where some women rank it up there with the "C" word, which is almost universally a hated word by females. Anyone want to sound off to confirm or deny this? And if it's true.. why the hell are some female underwear still called panties?? I mean, you ladies have like 10 different names for underwear..what with your thongs and your g-strings and your boy shorts and whatnot.... why not just do away with the word completely?
I don't know if I have an answer. On some level, it's an extension of the common courtesy thing. If I can do a little thing here or there to make a few more smiles and have people think that I'm a nice guy, I'm going to do it. While I don't really subscribe to superstition, my personality happens to be a classic Leo; I really like to be liked, and I like pleasing others as well.
But when it becomes more like you're really going out of your way for something so miniscule.. well... I really don't know.
All I know is that now that I'm part of corporate America, popularity has a whole new meaning, and having people at the office like you can actually result in good things career wise.
But I didn't want to be in with the popular people at work. There's a clique at work that includes the president and her catty tag-alongs... and I just didn't want to be a part of them, even though cracking jokes with the president of the company would be a good move for my career... I just didn't have it in me.
So here I am again, with the geeks of the company. I don't think there's a girl in it for me this time though, at least not at work.
Thanks for reading, and enjoy your frozen meal. : )
Again.
Whenever you're done laughing and pointing... read on.
Aside: After writing this; this is a long one. Go put that frozen meal in the oven now... you know.. the one that you haven't eaten because it tastes like crap if you microwave it but it takes like an hour to cook in the oven... that one. It's gonna be a while.
In my opinionated... umm.. opinion... they make these kinds of movies, and more importantly, they succeed despite being fluff, because we all relate to them in some way.
Now, of course I know how I relate to this movie. I was Preston. I was the geeky kid that always knew that if only I could "get in," I would be a great guy for a great girl. I saw beautiful girls that I had big crushes on just get crapped on by indifferent stereotypical jock types.
Aside: Of course, being a high-school aged kid, (and despite being, at least what I thought was pretty bright for my age,) I didn't always know who the "great girl" was; and truth be told, I often would think that unless I had distinct evidence to the contrary.. the "hot" girl was also the "great" girl. I've learned since then that almost all women have it in them to make themselves irresistably attractive to a guy who's curious about them... if they want to. :)
Now, though I just kind of made a stab at it, what makes girls (or guys for that matter) popular?
Since last time I checked, I wasn't a girl, nor was I girl when I was in high school, the only person I have extensive knowledge on is myself, so pardon me while I replace what should be some quoted social science research results with another nostalgic recollection that likely suffers greatly from exaggeration.
As I've said in one of my few previous posts, I grew up (and actually still live) in a very affluent town. The one public high school in town gets a LOT of funding, and is truly an amazing place.
Aside: To put this in perpective, the "Student Center," which basically is a multi-purpose area that serves as a cafeteria, place to socialize, and sort of the "center" of the school; is a one-acre square with a fifty foot tall ceiling.
Combine such a large socializing area, and many students (2500 or so when I went there, about 2700 now) and you can imagine that the clique formation is ridiculous.
So much so, that you can be really popular in your little microcosm... but still be a "nobody" as far as the whole school was concerned.
Weird huh?
So basically, even if you were a total geek, a bespectacled skinny kid who played Dungeons & Dragons and video games at every opportunity, (ahem, *cough* me *cough*), and growing up as a geek, you grew to despise popularity and doing things just to be popular, you could still find friends.
So, I had found my clan of fellow geeks, and unbelievably, we had girls that wanted to hang out with us too.
Aside: If only we knew how lucky we were, that at that particular (magical) moment in time, groups of girls would actually seek out guys.. and have their standards so low so as to find the group of self-esteem challenged misfits to which I belonged (that were members of the school's *retrospective snicker* "Strategy Club") acceptable guys to hang out with, and inevitably, go out with.
So, being the Preston-like kid I was, whenever I wasn't playing video games or Dungeons & Dragons, I was dwelling on the fact that, as much as I loved my friends, I wanted a friend to love.
Nature threw me a bone; I went from being a 5'8" skinny kid to a 6'2" not-so-skinny kid, in less than two years during high school; and looked decidedly less like your prototypical dorkus-maximus as a result.
I embraced theater as a new passion, especially comedy. I had always been a pretty funny guy, doing impressions pretty well, and though I wasn't a "thespian" (we actually had a "thespian" club that you needed to be invited to get into) I would be featured in the school's Improv shows regularly as the resident character comedian.
Aside: If you've actually read my previous posts, you can see how my aforementioned, but-now-defunct, theater company started; it was some of my buddies and I from the Improv Troupe that wanted to do summer theater.
So......
Me not looking like Urkel + Being relatively funny = Popularity
Popularity + Girls that didn't have other, better looking, guy friends = Get the Girl
I got the girl.
She was hot.
I lost my freaking mind.
My first "real" girlfriend (I'm not counting the kissing on the playground and passing notes girlfriends in elementary school, or the fake "wedding" ceremony after school girlfriends in Middle School) was an odyssey that spanned 4 years of on again-off again mental peaks and valleys. Being such a sheltered kid, I was the goody-goody that didn't want to smoke or drink or try pot or anything; doing stupid crap that might get me in trouble was something I just steered clear of, and I was pretty harsh on people, especially my friends, who did that stuff.
But there was no way I stood even a ghost of a chance against a certain vice when I was 16, with all the hormones that come with it, and my girlfriend was cute and actually wanted me.
Aside: You hear talk about guys not being able to think with the head on their shoulders when another head is involved; well... the ominous "they" (who apparently hold dominion over the world as we know it), are right.
Things might have been great, if she didn't have a little compulsive lying problem, wasn't the impulsive ying to my methodical yang, and I wasn't so helplessly attached to her and the high I got from her when things were good, that I didn't even realized the depth of the hole (read: mindfuck) that I was in.
Aside: Damn that lack of self-esteem; I really thought that I had no chance to get any other girl; and to this day, I have issues trying to "break the ice" with a girl. I have no idea how to say in a non-creepy way that I'm a totally decent guy that wants more than anything just to make a woman smile a real smile, and have it be all my fault.
Anyways... I could go on for far too many therapy sessions on my high school sweetheart.
Back to the topic at hand. Popularity.
So, within my clique, I was popular. I was the funny guy in the group. I even got a nickname that was a spoof on my last name: "Frange." I was even referred to as "The Frange" often, like I was the Fonz from Happy Days. It felt really good... I didn't even have to jump a motorcycle over a tank of sharks to keep my friends.
But... beyond my circle of friends, large as it was, and the people that saw my Improv Shows, nobody knew me.
Now; you might say, "Naw... you just didn't think people knew you.. they did."
Well, naw.. they didn't.
Fast Forward to end of Senior year, I'm anxious to pick up my yearbook, since Seniors get a bigger picture and you can put a quote under it. Silly sounding now, but it was a big deal back then.
I get my yearbook, and my last name is the same as one of my friends instead of my own, and my quote is completely missing.
Ouch.
The reimbursment of my yearbook purchase price, and a stack of little stickers with my right name and quote to hand out to people just didn't cut it for me.
Why was I so upset?
The people who mattered, my friends, they got the stickers and they knew. Why did I care about all the 400+ other people in my graduating class?
I realized, I cared about being popular. Not just popular to my friends, but popular to everyone. I wanted to at least cling to some possibility that people knew me, and when, in ten years, (yikes, which is next year) they glance at their yearbook and know who I was.
When I look back at my yearbook now, I'm completely indifferent about people that weren't my friends. I mean sure, I have memories about a lot of the people in there, but when I put the shoe on the other foot, I realize that no one gives a crap about me; and if anything, my strange circumstance of having my (wrong) last name be out of alphabetical order on the page, and my lack of quote might actually draw MORE attention to me than it would if everything were in place as it should've been.
But why should I care?
Why do we care about crap like this? Why do people get their proverbial collective panties up in a bunch about people we have so little contact with? I know I go way out of my way so that someone like a waiter at a restaurant doesn't think I'm an asshole.
Super-Sized Aside: I know this is totally off-topic... like I stay on topic ever... but I have it on good authority from a lot of ladies out there that women as a whole do NOT like the word "panties," to the point where some women rank it up there with the "C" word, which is almost universally a hated word by females. Anyone want to sound off to confirm or deny this? And if it's true.. why the hell are some female underwear still called panties?? I mean, you ladies have like 10 different names for underwear..what with your thongs and your g-strings and your boy shorts and whatnot.... why not just do away with the word completely?
I don't know if I have an answer. On some level, it's an extension of the common courtesy thing. If I can do a little thing here or there to make a few more smiles and have people think that I'm a nice guy, I'm going to do it. While I don't really subscribe to superstition, my personality happens to be a classic Leo; I really like to be liked, and I like pleasing others as well.
But when it becomes more like you're really going out of your way for something so miniscule.. well... I really don't know.
All I know is that now that I'm part of corporate America, popularity has a whole new meaning, and having people at the office like you can actually result in good things career wise.
But I didn't want to be in with the popular people at work. There's a clique at work that includes the president and her catty tag-alongs... and I just didn't want to be a part of them, even though cracking jokes with the president of the company would be a good move for my career... I just didn't have it in me.
So here I am again, with the geeks of the company. I don't think there's a girl in it for me this time though, at least not at work.
Thanks for reading, and enjoy your frozen meal. : )
posted by Frange at 12:10 AM
3 comments
