I moved to New Jersey the summer before I entered the fourth grade, almost fifteen years ago now. It was tough for me since I found myself meeting all new people and needing to make friends. Even though I had been in similar situations before, it was particularly stressful for me this time. New Jersey was weird. Especially at school, where there were no classrooms, only open space.
I was a pretty intelligent kid, and I was not particularly inclined to keep my mouth shut when I knew information during school. On top of that, in fourth grade I wasn’t as socially svelte as I am now. Needless to say, I didn’t make an excessive amount of friends too quickly at this strange NJ school. I was picked on by the boys and picked on by the girls, I think. Well, they didn’t like me as far as I could tell, but I didn’t make myself too likeable. There were always girls I had crushes on — since Kindergarten — and the only way for me to communicate my feelings was by teasing and maybe being a little mean.
In any case, I felt very unliked by this one girl, B., but I thought she was smart and nice, so I teased her. But she didn’t like it and we became very competitive. I remember one concert in fifth grade — we both played clarinet — where at the end of the night she gave me the report of the number of times I squeaked on the instrument.
This “friendly” rivalry lasted into middle school as well, where I was always at least a seat ahead of her in band. She would challenge me to a playing contest (where the better player gets to keep the better seat) but we’d always tie, which means I’d keep my seat.
Now B. had lots of friends in middle school. By this point there were enough people that we each had our own “clique.” I never made an effort to speak to her or her friends, because I just sort of lumped them all together as “those girls who don’t like me.”
Maybe I was wrong. At the last eighth grade dance, K., a member of B.’s clique, asked me if I’d like to dance. I was sure it had to be a trick! This was one of those girls who doesn’t like me. Maybe it wasn’t a trick. Maybe she honestly wanted to spend some time with me. It’s a shame I was closed-minded at the time.
I went through pretty much all of high school not attempting to talk to any of “them;” I felt perhaps they still didn’t like me. But I never really gave them a chance to, since my original attempt in fourth grade, and it was a completely different set of people by the end of high school. But also, by the end of high school, I had my own set of well-established friends and was less concerned about people’s opinions of me than I was in fourth grade. Yet I was still closed to many possibilities of friendships due to the way I viewed some of them eight years previous.