Were you popular in high school?

Jazzy1

Jazzy1

Got A Cracker?
Location
Adirondack Region NY
I wasn’t accepted by my peers. I moved around a lot because my dad was in the military. This went on for my entire childhood and teenage years. At some schools I was very popular and friends with everyone and at others I was either ignored or very badly bullied. It was the most confusing crazy case of emotional and social whiplash! I would go from having a great group of friends at one school, having sleepovers and hanging out all the time to having absolutely no friends and being bullied for everything (especially my second-hand clothes) at the next school.
Were you popular in high school?
 

At the time I didn't think so... I just kind of muddled through with a few very close friends but not interacting much with others. A couple years ago, I was talking with one of those old school friends and said something about the girl who endlessly bullied me about something or other all through school. My friend had a shocked look and said "You had a BULLY?! I thought everyone loved you!"

Maybe the way things are today, I would have shared with her what was going on, but apparently I didn't back then. 🤷‍♀️
 
I have just looked at a photo taken in 1960 of my class in Kuwait. I counted 21 kids at that point but the number went down as majority of the boys and some of the girls were sent to boarding school not long afterwards. I was very quiet and shy but formed a close friendship with 3 other girls who, like me, weren't sent to boarding school. I don't know that anyone was particularly popular or unpopular, we all just got along as we mixed together not only at school but at the various company Clubs/swimming pool etc. after school hours.
 
I was friends with the popular kids and the least popular and all in between. We moved twice so had to go through the new girl thing. When I was a teenager being a new girl made me popular with the boys. But not with the girls. After the girls got over that and realized I had a brother that they wanted to connect with they accepted me too.
 
katlupe said:
I was friends with the popular kids and the least popular and all in between. We moved twice so had to go through the new girl thing. When I was a teenager being a new girl made me popular with the boys. But not with the girls. After the girls got over that and realized I had a brother that they wanted to connect with they accepted me too.
Click to expand...
katlupe, the same thing with me and my brother. He was popular with the girls and they were friendly with me
wanting to meet him. He thought it was all silly.
 
Nope. I grew up in an area of old money and new money but my family moved back and forth between lower class and the very bottom of the middle class, so never had the right clothes, house, my own car, etc.

I said something once about the mean popular kids to a gal in high school that I had never interacted with before, a gal who was very pretty and had a great personality. She replied agreeing with me about the mean popular kids and I told her that I was surprised she'd say that, that I figured she was one of the popular kids and she said, "No! Are you nuts? Somebody like me who has to wear the same clothes every week?! There's no way those girls would ever accept me!"
 
I'm afraid not. I attended three different high schools as my father's career abruptly accelerated up the corporate step ladder and we moved as he accepted new company locations. So I was in "new guy" survival mode.......popularity was a luxury outside my frame of reference.
In contrast to the previous nine years when I was in the same population of students ever since we were all in 1st Grade.......and I was securely part of a clique and popularity was a fait accompli that I took for granted.

High school for me was an instructive and educational experience in a variety of ways.
 
I knew a lot of the kids in my grade level, and got along okay with just about all of them. But the truly "popular" kids mostly came from more affluent families. So I did gradually come to feel a little restricted. I got good marks in my classes, right up until I found myself almost totally disinterested in maths, in grade 12... 🤷‍♂️ But passed even in that.

Truth be told, by the end of high school, I'd become extremely interested in what lay outside of the curriculum. I think by then I was only really popular with a small group of (bohemian?) types. But that turned into a real adventure for a while after.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top