I’m not sure I could teach you how to be popular, even if I wanted to. I never felt like I was when I was growing up, so it might be a bit like asking our dog Stella to teach you to drive a stick shift. Truthfully, I’d rather teach you how to make friends and be a good friend to others. I think that will serve you better.
Besides that, talking about popularity and social status gives me a case of imposter syndrome, as if all the people I consider friends are suddenly going to reveal they’ve been trolling me for years and actually think I’m a total tool.
So, I’d rather teach you the resilience and self-confidence you need to be less concerned about popularity and social status and more focused on finding connections that make you happy.
Why do I say I wasn’t popular? In elementary and middle school, I was a fat kid who liked to read and didn’t have a ton of friends, so I got picked on. I’m not looking for pity, my experience wasn’t unique or particularly awful; kids can be real assholes. And since this is intended for you to read when you’re 18, by the time you read it, you’ll have had your own experiences to judge that statement. But my life experiences have taught me something valuable; you can make friends, be a good friend, and have a great social life without being overly focused on how popular you are.
An aside about shitty kids: while I was thinking about this entry, I looked up a guy on Facebook who once pissed in my canteen at Boy Scout camp. I was surprised to see he’d grown up to be a chef and opened a food truck that focused on natural and local foods. I told your Mom how surprised I was that we shared an interest, that as adults we’d have something to talk about besides what water from a canteen that had been pissed in tastes like. I’m not sure what I expected, maybe that he’d gone into professional watersports, but she said something I had to share: “Hopefully we can all grow and change.” And who knows if he did, but she’s right. It’s important to allow for that possibility.
Back on topic. I do hope you never pursue the type of exclusionary popularity and social status that’s built on being shitty to less popular people. Making someone else feel like an outsider is a crap way to prove you belong in whatever club or group you’re trying to be a part of.
You’re better off being resilient, believing in yourself and your own worth, and not getting bent out of shape about what other people think about you. That kind of self-confidence frees you to be yourself, instead of some version of yourself you think other people will like. And the resilience? It’s for when you’re not feeling so good about yourself.
I realize I’m underselling how difficult it is to be self-confident and resilient. I wish it were as easy as teaching you to ride a bike or throw a ball. Stand here, do this, and suddenly, you’re doing it. Clearly, it’s not. But just because it’s hard to do doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. Glennon Doyle said it well, “we can do hard things.”
I have a friend from college who has more “best friends” than most people have acquaintances. And as much as we tease him for making best friends with seven people before breakfast every day, Randy is probably one of the kindest people I know. I hope you’ve had the chance to spend time with him, his son, and his wife as you’ve grown up, but the relevant story about him comes from our days at Wake Forest. When I was in school, an incredibly high percentage of students belonged to a fraternity or sorority. Much of your social status had to do with the organization you’d joined.
While some people avoided socializing outside their fraternity or sorority, Randy didn’t limit himself to our group. As I’m writing this, I can’t believe how juvenile and insane it sounds to call him courageous for eating meals with people who weren’t in our secret handshake club. But that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Despite older fraternity brothers telling him he shouldn’t, Randy sat in the cafeteria and ate with people those fraternity members didn’t think were cool.
It feels like a little thing now, looking back twenty years later. But as someone who worried about my own social status when I was in college, I’m not sure I could have done what he did. I know I didn’t.
See, it takes self-confidence and resilience to act that way, to be above that kind of pettiness. When you learn to care a little less about what others think, you’re free to make connections that work for you, to be friends with the kinds of people you want to be friends with. That’s the kind of inclusionary popularity I’d be thrilled to see you pursue.
Make friends with whoever you want to. Create your own groups by gathering people that share your interests and connecting them to each other. Bring others along with you, and find friends that will sit with you in the cafeteria no matter what anyone else says.
When you have those kinds of friends to depend on and spend time with, you’ll find yourself caring less about who’s cool and who’s not and more about the friends you know you can depend on. Which is a pretty great way to go through life.
I love you and hope you have even more best friends than Randy,
Dad
I originally planned to finish this series in twelve months, intending to write one entry a week for 52 weeks. But, other things came up and I didn’t have as much time as I thought I would. We moved, you started a new school, I had other projects, etc. But finally, I’m starting my last entry in September, nine months after I’d planned. Which is the perfect intro to this one.
Time is funny like that. It marches on like a metronome, indifferent to how much you wish it would slow down or speed up. It offers no do-overs, no matter how frivolously you spend it. And it gives zero fucks what you planned to accomplish in the time you had. Once that time is over, you’ll get no more. But, it also stretches out ahead of you into an unknown future, offering untold possibility and infinite choices.
Which is why I hope you both learn to make choices about how you spend your time and understand what those choices mean. Because while there’s never enough time for everything, there’s still enough time to do almost anything.