Dear Sugar,
I’m kind of new in school and I want to make friends. All I ever hear is “just be yourself” and “just be friendly” and it’s not that easy on your second day of eighth grade. Everyone already has their own cliques and groups and they exclude me from everything. Everyone already knows who they’re going to pair up with in science class, while I’m stuck with an anti-social kid who picks his nose. I really want to make friends and I don’t know what to do. Can you please help me, Sugar?
Thanks.
Wilda
Dear Wilda,
I peed my pants in eighth grade. I really did. It was in gym class and we were square dancing. Do you square dance at school or have we also left that behind with the No Child Left Behind Act? If we have, it’s a shame because square dancing is a serious hoot. Not only do you get to dance, you get to dance with someone else, which in my case, meant a boy. I was so overcome by the combination of romantic anxiety and delighted do-si-do-induced hysteria that I wet my drawers. As I bet you can imagine, it was a humiliation beyond measure. If someone had handed me a gun right then, I’d have shot myself in the head.
This came on top of another, less dramatic humiliation—also having to do with my pants. You see, I only owned three pairs in eighth grade and there are five days in the school week, which meant I had to rotate through them, and mix in the odd (loathsome) skirt. Two of the pants were tremendously embarrassing, bearing the label that identified them as having been purchased at a mortifying national discount store where my mother purchased almost all of my clothes throughout my childhood. The other was a pair of white denim Levi’s that I bought with my own money, saved up from babysitting.
Those Levi’s were the first “brand name” thing I ever owned. I loved them so much I could cry right now if I thought about them hard enough. You know what I did, don’t you, sweet pea? I couldn’t help myself. For two weeks running I wore them every other day (Monday, Wednesday, Friday). I hoped no one would notice. I hoped they’d only see how cool and fabulous I was. Those white jeans! They were Levi’s!
But of course I was wrong.
Is there any group of people on the planet more eagle-eyed than eighth graders? I think not. Eighth graders are the people we should’ve sent out to locate Osama Bin Laden. They see everything. They forgive nothing. I became The Girl Who Wears The Same Pants.
This was on top of my other nickname: Porky the Pig. I’d been dubbed that because:
a) I was ever-so-infinitesimally fatter than the International Regulatory Commission on the Female Body had mandated, and
b) the year before—when I was in seventh grade—a teacher had stood before my desk and announced to the entire class in an amused tone that I smelled strongly of bacon. In this observation, she was imprecise. I actually smelled like wood smoke because my family was so poor that our rented farmhouse didn’t have a working furnace, in spite of the fact that we lived in a legendarily cold climate, so we heated our house with a woodstove that my stepfather made out of a fifty-five gallon metal barrel and planted in a sandbox in our kitchen. The woodstove spewed smoke as well as a horrible smelling black toxic gunge—the lining or remnants of whatever had once been in the barrel, I suppose—which dripped incessantly from the hand-rigged metal smoke stack that went out our kitchen window (and which also happens to be my latest theory for what caused my mother’s death ten years down the road).
Okay, darling, do you follow? I had shitty clothes. I was a teeny tiny bit “fat.” I smelled like something other than Babe and Tickle deodorant. And I peed my pants. In public. While square dancing. With a boy.
At the time of the pants peeing, my family lived in the small house where my stepfather had grown up. We’d been forced to leave the ramshackle farmhouse with the toxic homemade woodstove at the beginning of my eighth grade year because my stepfather had been injured on the job and he’d been bedridden for six months without pay because he’d been working under the table and therefore had no legal recourse. Even though he was back to work by the time I was in eighth grade, we were so far in the hole by then that my mom and stepfather couldn’t possibly pay the rent on the farmhouse, so we moved in with my stepfather’s parents.
It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. My step-grandfather—I’ll call him Frank—had become ill with a mysterious disease we later understood was Alzheimer’s. His wife Lucy had a full-time job in a toy factory and she needed help looking after Frank while she was at work. There was a two-hour gap between the time Lucy departed for work and my siblings and I returned home from school in the afternoons, and another two-hour gap until my mother got home from work. It was up to my siblings and me to take care of Frank during that time. Sometimes when we walked in the door he’d be weeping, bound up and bewildered in some corner of the house he’d built himself, utterly lost in the place where he and Lucy had raised their five kids. Other times he’d sit at the kitchen table and tell lucid, dirty stories about the women he’d slept with in the South Pacific in the years after World War II. Often, he was rabidly delusional, seeing things my siblings and I couldn’t see and talking about them in ways that alternately amused and frightened us. He would call me by my own name at times and other times by my mother’s or sister’s names. Sometimes he wouldn’t be able to think of a name at all and he’d simply call me girl. “Girl,” he’d say. “Get me my cigarettes.” And then he’d light two and smoke them both at once, aware only of the one he held in his hand. He would forget what an apple was called and also the name of the next town over. He would bang on the table and cuss in a pitiful rage over his forgetting. He’d beat his own head with his eternally calloused workingman’s fists. When I tried to stop him he’d tell me to go and fuck myself.
It was so hard living with Frank and Lucy. They weren’t my real grandparents. I’d only met them a couple of years before. I wasn’t sure if they loved me or if I loved them. They thought my mom was kind of a hippy—and she kind of was. She was older than my stepfather and her tubes were tied; because of her, he’d never have biological kids. There were tense female clashes about what to make for dinner and who should make it and whether there should be onions in it; about whether the TV should be on or off and what show we should watch; about the curtains being open or shut and who should get to boss us kids around.
All this, and yet I was essentially happy. There was so much life in that house. Real life. Life that had nothing to do with what pants I wore or what I did in them while I was square dancing or how microscopically fat I might be or whether I smelled like toxic bacon. You have a real life too, Wilda. Your life is bigger than whatever goes on in eighth grade science class. Remember that.
In spite of my humiliations, I had friends in eighth grade and I imagine you do too by now. Of course your second day at a new school wasn’t “easy.” Second days tend to be fraught with uncertainty, regardless of your age or situation. The exclusion you felt as the new kid at school most likely had nothing to do with you. Your peers weren’t trying to exclude you; they were only trying to include themselves. When the adults in your life encourage you to “just be yourself,” they’re giving you the best advice they have. They’re telling you what they came to know with the perspective of their years: that the only way to overcome your insecurities about being left out is to be comfortable in your own sweet skin.
I know that’s a lot for you to do right now. Eighth grade is a universally difficult year. You don’t yet know how perfect you are and also how imperfect. You’re trying to survive in a social order that’s predicated on conformity and scarcity when the life you’re leading is original and abundant. How can you be yourself when you don’t yet entirely know who it is you are? I don’t exactly know. Or rather, I know, but there isn’t anything I can say that will make the bright anxiety and dark confusion of this time disappear. There are important things you’re learning right now that you can only learn by living them. But I can tell you that the thing that speaks most profoundly to me in your letter is not your own angst about being included, but rather your offhand exclusion of the “anti-social kid who picks his nose.”
It may seem that those two things are unrelated, but they’re not. It’s a closed circuit system, sweet pea. You are not one iota more worthy of love or inclusion than that boy. No matter what happens, no matter how old you are, I know for certain that so long as you believe yourself to be superior to him you will never feel okay with yourself. Until you are incapable of writing the sentence “while I’m stuck with an anti-social kid who picks his nose,” you will never truly believe yourself to be welcome among others. You must love in order to be loved. You must be inclusive in order to feel yourself among the included. You must give in order to receive.
It’s the simplest equation in the world and yet so complex. A lot of people live their whole lives and never work it out. Don’t let yourself be one of them.
Yours,
Sugar
31 responses
Ouch. I hate to say it, but I think you missed the mark this time, Sugar. Sometimes you don’t make friends. I definitely went through some years in middle school with none. Eighth grade was one of them — a new school, kids I didn’t get, and I spent a year being left out and feeling mocked. And yes, you do have to learn to love other people and yourself, but sometimes you just need to get by. Sometimes you want friends, and honestly don’t know how to work that simple human problem out. I hope this kid has made a friend by now, because if she hasn’t she’s going to feel even shittier that you assumed she OF COURSE would have by this point.
Oh 8th grade was harsh, but eventually you make friends. I remember having to wear hand me down clothes from the other girls in the neighborhood because I had older brothers and money was scarce. The other girls recognized the clothes and there was definately some mean girl moments. But the kindred spirits exist and they recognize each other eventually. I got through it, but boy you couldn’t pay me to do it again!
Dear Wilda,
I think you are so brave to write to Sugar using your own, real name. Also, bravo for being bright enough to go to the right people for advice. Sugar always knows what’s best.
I too, was the New Kid in an 8th grade class that was divided up into little subgroups I just couldn’t identify into. I ended up making friends with the undernourished, oily-haired “White trash”, as everyone referred to her, girl that had no friends. Every day she wrote me illegible, totally banal notes that I answered in good faith with my good grammar and spelling.
I don’t know what happened to that girl.
I don’t even think we remained friends for that long. I think she was my transition friend or something like that, because after that I became best friends with a girl that threw my books in the mud (!). In any case, she gave me something, because I was willing to not judge her. Maybe you’ll find that the guy that picks his nose does it because he doesn’t *want* to fit in with those other, judgmental jerks. Maybe he’s special like you, Wilda.
I wish you all the luck in the world, because you’re going to need it, but just remember, you’ll get through it, no matter what.
To be fair, Sugar didn’t say that Wilda “of course” had friends by now…she said she “imagine[d she] d[id] to by now.” That being said, I tend to agree that Sugar did sugar-coat it a little for our friendless-friend, but not before taking her to task for her undue snobbery. All in all, another great read (aside: I loved the story of your stepdad’s homemade fireplace). . . especially for someone who is supposed to be taking the week off (I thought) 🙂
Thank you, Sugar, for once again sharing so much of yourself with us. I love your honesty.
Wilda, there are many of us who understand your situation, and we all lived through it and came out as happy, healthy individuals, not that that makes you feel any less alone right now. It is hard to follow the advice of “Just be yourself” when you are 13 or 14 and are still discovering WHO you are, but that’s part of the journey, and most of your classmates are as insecure as you are. Sugar is right about not seeing yourself as any better than the anti-social nose-picker. I understand that you might feel that befriending him/her, will cast you in a bad light with the “cool” kids, but finding the confidence and understanding to befriend everyone will make you feel better, and will open up possibilities you may have never imagined. Having confidence at your age is very appealing to others. Good luck on your life journey. I hope it’s beautiful.
That was my first thought when reading Wilda’s letter: Start by being nice to that “anti-social kid who picks his nose.”
Sugar, I adore you. It’s an awesome perspective to bring up life outside of school. I don’t remember seeing my family-life as valuable in the 8th grade, even though I know better now. I just got a wee bit nervous with the comment about shooting yourself in the head, if you had the opportunity. Yikes! Okay. That’s it. I’m going to keep reading and loving you!
I thought your column was absolutely brilliant, as a parent, as a therapist who works with children and remembering myself as a child who was awkward, scared and felt left out most of the time. I rarely felt included. I thought it was because I lacked something, and that I didn’t understand the secret inclusion equation that everyone else understood and if I could get it right, be like they were, then I would feel included. No one told me to be myself and let that unfold, which is a message of love and acceptance. There is no easy way to that except living. I think your advice to be yourself is fundamentally the message all kids need to hear. It is the light you hope they keep their eyes on as the continue to move through that tough developmental time when fitting in is a desperate need. Parenting, mentoring is about normalizing their struggles and giving them the tools that help them move on to the next stage of their life. You did this brilliantly.
I love this line: “Your peers weren’t trying to exclude you; they were only trying to include themselves.” Too often we validate kids perceptions they are being left out intentionally and then they are left with that definition of themselve — the kid no one wants to be with. All kids feel left out at some point and it isn’t necessarily reflective of the kids intentions. Sometimes it is. This is a child who was new to a school. It is a tough transition but too early to defined by that initial experience of loneliness and worry. Being open, having alternative narratives are important tools.
This was brilliant: “Until you are incapable of writing the sentence “while I’m stuck with an anti-social kid who picks his nose,†you will never truly believe yourself to be welcome among others.” Boy did I not want to be paired with someone I thought was further down the food chain than I was during that dark time but awareness of that dichotomy — feeling so sadly left out and then turning around and rejecting someone who I thought inferior — did not go far in my feeling better about myself. We sell kids short by not pushing them toward more integrity just because they are struggling too. Lots of kids, if not most, struggle in someway. Pushing them to do better in that particular aspect, to have compassion when they are feeling low, is a necessary message. I appreciate the heart and soul you have for this consistent message you deliver in your columns.
Thank you. I plan to read this to my children. It will, hopefully, go toward developing their greater sense of compassion for others.
I loved this, thank you Sugar. Brought tears to my eyes as usual.
Hi Sugar, I read your column. I am 15 years old and wanted you to know that I agreed with so much of the advice you gave.
I had a hard time in middle school. I felt left out and was really shy. People would tease me and I didn’t know how to take it. I wouldn’t be friendly. I used to not like people I didn’t know. Now I am friends with them — a lesson in being judgemental. I learned that by being friendly and open, you are letting people get to know you, and you are being yourself. If you are afraid to be yourself you are not giving people a chance. You may think of yourself as wierd or ugly but it may not be the way other people see you. If someone doesn’t talk to you at first it doesn’t mean that they don’t like you. By being friendly, and saying hi, they could go from being quiet to friendlier.
I really believe you are right — if you look down on someone it doesn’t make you feel good. It makes you feel like a jerk. A lot of people feel excluded, and that nobody likes them, but if you open up to people like the “nose picker” you will find that he is not so different than you are. He probably feels exactly the same way as she does.
I also believe that people don’t exclude on purpose. It is just that they are including themselves.
Everybody picks their nose. The difference is that some people are comfortable enough to do it in public. Sugar, you say it best. Don’t judge, otherwise, what really separates you from those who are judgmental?
Hang in there Wilda!
Sugar had some great advice, but I also agree with the first response: sometimes it’s just not going to work out. It didn’t work out for me, even after trying to be friendly (with anyone who would have me) and following all the advice my parents, older sister, and a counselor at school. I felt like I would never ever find a place to fit in. And it turned out that I wouldn’t, not in my hometown. Once I left for college, things got great, and I’ve had an active healthy social life since then.
You should definitely take all of Sugar’s advice to heart FIRST, but if that doesn’t work out, here’s some things that helped me and took way too long to figure out on my own:
–books. Books are full of people eager to have you in their lives, and reading takes up all that ugly empty recess and afterschool time. They also help with the next thing.
–connect with safe adults. Your teachers are likely dying for involved interested students. I found a good appropriate friend in one of my English teachers, with the side bonus that she’d let me read in her classroom during lunch, so I wasn’t sitting out in a corner by myself. I also learned that one of my aunts is really cool and we would have a weekly dinner.
–connect with kids in other places. The internet makes it easy now, I’m guessing. I had a few penpals, and writing them letters helped with the feeling that I was the only weirdo kid in the world.
–grit your teeth and wait it out. Yes, it sucks, hard, no matter how many well-meaning adults tell you that it’s not that bad. But later you’ll find people who went through the same stuff, and you’ll laugh all night talking about how terrible it was. Allow that pain for now knowing that it’s not permanent.
Good luck, and you are not alone.
Sugar, as far as I’m concerned you walk on water. Or at least on molasses.
The fact that Wilda is reading Rumpus is crucial. She has parents or some means of being exposed to an aspect of culture that isn’t Disnogrified (I just made that up because my head was saying Disney and Homogenized. No, it doesn’t make sense). Maybe she’ll figure out that all the kids are just as scared as she is. That’s why they’re huddling in little cliques. It must
be confusing and rather terrifying to be an eighth grader in these times. My heart goes out to Wilda and wishes her courage.
The thing you don’t get until later is that it’s easy, so terribly, pathetically easy to make friends. I practically had my own religious cult by just being inclusive and witty and willing to accept and seek out everyone who got cast by the wayside who I thought might like to be entertained. The difference was, I was transferred out of one school, where I was economically unable to keep up with the trends of my peers, and into one where suddenly I was the upper echelon. I was able to laugh at all the jokes, point out biting inconsistencies with school policy or grading practices with cracking wit, toss my head and smile at anyone who was brought up to the circle I’d created on the lawn at lunch so no one ever got excluded.
But the problem is this: Without experience with myself, and without the limits necessary that would have excluded certain people and behaviors from my circle, I was not a competent leader. I quickly thought nothing of the way my early friends waved off new-comers so I’d have my usual space to sit down. I did not engage or empathize or understand the annoyance and smoldering looks of those who were all forced to scoot out of the way and show subservience, however minor and petty, that this was my way, my clique, and my stage to make people laugh until the spit milk through their noses, begging me ahead of time not to do it when they were wearing nice clothes.
The problem is, the power you have means nothing, it’s the power you want that you think defines you.
It’s only years later that you learn the art of accepting that people really care about you, and you can only do that when you accept yourself.
I hated myself. I had horrible things going on underneath all that happy energy I was throwing out around me to protect myself from having to be exposed for who I was, because I didn’t have any idea who that was yet.
I don’t think Sugar misses the mark. I think it’s just one of those things, where you go into eighth grade, or high school or even your twenties, and you just have to know you’re going to get better, and the regrets you get later show you how good an advance you’ve made from the raw resources you start with as a young adult.
My first day at that new school, the girls who gave me hell at my old school did everything they could to give me hell at the new one. I made the usual peace offerings to them, but the difference was, I knew I was in a bigger school and there were more people to see and learn from and smile and explore with. Just the art of loving and wanting to help other people is pretty huge in eighth grade. If you can show the flip indifference to people judging you for being cooler than they are by your own estimation, they’ll try harder to knock you down, then they’ll get confused, then they’ll leave you alone. And that’s what you want. Don’t sit at the table, make the circle.
It’s one year before ninth grade, and that’s when it gets really good – the choices will always keep opening up. How you choose to practice now indicates how much more relaxed you will be at meeting all sorts of other people later on.
The kids reduced to talking about people’s bodily functions, frizzy hair, weight, ticks and weirdness are looking for easy power, the kind anybody can get if they’re willing to do anything to lord over people using fear and intimidation.
I’ve seen what those kids look like all grown up. I was surprised to find them still sitting in dark movie theaters, picking on people’s shoes or zits or hair or lazy eye, and you know what? They were so much more pathetic for never having learned how to like anyone.
My one regret about that bizzare experiment of mine? As little as I said anything bad about anyone, I just wish I had said less ABOUT the people around me, and more TO them, asked questions, listened to their ideas, been willing to set aside my own pain more so that I could comfort theirs.
A lot of those people I sort of ignored ended up being quite wonderful. Most of the people who made me feel bad did not end up well at all. As in, why did I spend my time trying to get the approval of people who turned out to be nothing like the sort of person I was becoming anyway?
Good luck!
I also think it’s important to realize that you can be yourself, and still be excluded, disliked, and even actively targeted by peers. But it’s important to give it a try, and also to know that if you are kind to someone on the rung below you, and if people judge you for that — they’re not people you want to be friends with anyway.
Depending on who you are, there may not actually be friends available in your science class, or at your school. But they’re out there. You may find them by volunteering, by doing an extracurricular activity … by doing what’s important to you. The kids you’re with at school are just kids you’re thrown together with for a few years … your best bet to make friends is to find people — be they kids or adults — whose core values and interests are the same as yours. They may not be present right where you find yourself; and you might have to wait a little while before they turn up.
But in the meantime, you can always feel strong about who you are and what you’re doing if you are kind. That doesn’t mean being a sucker and falling for the false-sweet mean girl crap that goes on — it means having your own center, speaking the truth as you know it, and asking adults whom you respect for their advice and guidance. Every adult was once your age, and every adult hated it. The ones who grew up to be people you love or like — ask ’em how they did it. They’re your best resource for real examples of how to survive the awfulness that is adolescence.
Sugar, this was great.
Wilda: Even the popular kids (or most of them at least) feel like they don’t fit in in the eighth grade. Everyone always looks a lot more well-adjusted from the outside than they feel on the inside. My mom told me that when I was in middle school, and I didn’t believe her–and I told my little sister the same thing, and I don’t think she believes me–but it’s true. There are worse things than feeling out of place. Middle school is hard because you’re coming into your own as a person, and dealing with all these complex identity issues that you’re having to face for the first time–as time goes on, things don’t necessarily get easier, but you have a better frame of reference, and eventually you learn better coping mechanisms. Everything will be put into perspective.
I know it probably isn’t much comfort to you now, because you don’t want to feel like you’ll fit in five years from now, you want things to work at this moment–and I hope you find some way to just focus on the positive things that are happening in your life at this time, and have faith that the negative things will get better. I went through middle school thinking I would never fit in (& the stupid thing is, I fit in just fine, and would’ve fit in even better if I’d stopped being so anxious about it). I didn’t get my first kiss until I was 16 years old (which I thought was ancient at the time but now I’m happy I didn’t get tangled up in all that any earlier in my life). Since then, I’ve had a couple boyfriends, and dated a bunch of guys, and had lots and lots of friends and fun and…my life really opened up in all the ways I’d hoped it would, but feared it wouldn’t, when I was younger.
You will be able to make your life into what you want it to be. You just can’t do it overnight. Until then, you have to try have faith in yourself. And once you’re comfortable with yourself, you’ll feel so much more comfortable with other people.
Sugar’s right, though. To a certain extent, the anxiety and confusion of the 8th (and 9th, and 10th, etc) grade isn’t something anyone else can help you through. It’s hard because you’re learning it for yourself. But, honestly, you’ll figure it out eventually. Everyone does. It’s an insufficient comfort, but it’s all anyone can offer.
Oh Wilda, to coin a phrase that’s quite popular these days, “it gets better.” Eighth grade was the worst for me. In my case, like Sugar’s, I was a little bit fat, I was also a brainy know it all, and a low-echelon snob.
Listen to Sugar: Nothing will get you excluded from the reindeer games quicker than acting like you are too cool for the uncool kids. If I could go whisper something to myself on the first day of 8th grade, it would be “be nicer.” And I don’t mean ask the weird kid for his phone number or anything, but just maybe give the weird kid a chance to show you what his secret superpower is.
The beginning of eighth grade sucked, mostly. But by the end of the year things were looking up. I had figured out a tiny bit of my own style, I had a better sense of humor, and I had a few acquaintances and at least one really good friend. Like everyone has said, it just happens, because you’re there living through it. I know that for me, living through that year made starting high school something I really looked forward to.
I encourage you to keep a journal. You will want to look back on this time, someday, and you’ll want to get it right. Write down who you liked, what you wore, and your favorite songs. It will be invaluable to you later. Best of luck xoxo
I love you, Sugar.
I don’t think I know anyone who had an easy go of it in junior high. I am sure someone did, but I have never met that person. The rest of us were depressed, developed eating disorders, developed prodigious pot-smoking habits, fought with our parents, fought with our teachers, fought with our classmates, hated ourselves, hated our classmates, tried to fit in, tried to stand out, tried to disappear completely…what a wretched time. I doubt that makes you feel much better, Wilda, but just know that it’s practically a universal truth that junior high sucks.
And Sugar, thanks for pointing out Wilda’s own exclusionary thinking. I can’t speak for others but when I was at my most insecure as a teenager, I was also at my meanest and my pettiest. I used to search out the few kids who were bigger outcasts than I was, and I would either avoid them or I would make fun of them. The only reason I did it was to prove to myself that while I might have been a loser and a dork, at least I wasn’t THAT big of a dork. At least I wasn’t the WORST. It would have been nice to have someone point out my hypocrisy when I was younger, rather than being a grown-up and still feeling that deep burn of shame whenever I think about what a little shit I was.
i don’t think the “anti social kid who picks his nose” is a real person. but maybe in 8th grade you don’t say things that aren’t literally true. unless you’re gurion.
maybe the kid should join a club or something to be around like-minded people. this letter just brings back soooo many horrible memories of adolescence. i’d be your friend, wilda! be strong! good luck! i wish you all the best!
Last summer, I had to sort through all my ancient penpal letters, to get rid of the clutter I’d accumulated over the years. I had a couple hundred penpals when I was about thirteen/fourteen years old: okay, some of them dropped off the face of the earth after a letter or two, but many of them stuck around long-term. Around that time, I was extremely lonely in school, and unsure how to deal with people like a normal human being. Whenever I said something, it seemed to come out wrong. I’d try to make a joke and I’d just sound like a weirdo instead. My best friend was in the process of being stolen from me by a mean girl, and I was like a walking caricature of teen angst.
One thing I noticed when I went through those old letters: so many people telling me how great I was. How interesting, how funny. How much they’d love to meet me. Many of my penpals were adults, who’d tell me they wouldn’t normally write to someone so young, but I seemed so mature. These people pep-talked me through the loneliest of years. I’d have miserable days at school but I could expect half a dozen letters to be waiting for me when I got home, from around the world.
I had remembered a lot about those penpals and those letters, of course, but at some point over the years, I had forgotten about the validation they gave me.
I had these dreams of having a double life. Some kind of really exciting life outside of school, and then it wouldn’t matter how soul-destroying my days there were. As it happens, I eventually kind of managed that: by my final couple of years at school, you’d find me sitting in a corner of the locker room, transcribing interviews I’d conducted with indie bands. I’d discovered a music scene that my classmates were largely oblivious to, and with it I’d met people who were willing to give me a chance. I changed my name and gradually learned how to be myself.
Of course, once I’d gotten myself a social life, I didn’t have so much time to write letters. Nowadays the only person I make a proper effort to write to is my penpal in prison, because he doesn’t have internet access and letters are among the few things he’s got to look forward to. Also, I grew apart from many of my penpals, way back when. But I remember my favourite penpal from those days. She lived in California and she’d changed her name to Aprl, no ‘i’, and she was 25 when we first started writing. And when I said that I felt lonely and didn’t have a best friend, she told me that there was a best friend waiting for me out in California. I don’t know where she’s at these days, but even though we eventually fell out of contact (my fault), what she said meant a whole lot to me. I guess the cumulative effect of all these penpals, all these letters, was realising that the world was so much bigger than what I was going through at school. And that helped.
Sarah E., you’re a better woman than me. I am embarrassed and forever changed by the fact that it wasn’t until the end of Sugar’s post that your initial thought hit me like a ton of bricks. I’m actually feeling ashamed of myself, especially given that I was pretty much an anti-social nose-picker in 8th grade.
Wanda–“We sell kids short by not pushing them toward more integrity just because they are struggling too.” Yes. Yes. Yes.
Sugar, I agree and disagree. Lot of times, it depends on the school. As a teacher at an exclusive school, I bust my ass to make sure that no one is left out–as in, “On pain of death, children, EVERYONE will have a partner for this assignment or we will never work in groups again. The End.” But yeah–you have to be willing to Be A Friend to make a friend.
Also, Sugar, I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: You write so beautifully.
Sugar, you are right on this one. I would like to add a few things though, since I was an 8th grade outcast, too. First, if you’re stuck wearing hand-me-down, acid wash, horribly embarrasing clothes, own it. That’s right. Own it. So what if they make fun of you for your parents not having enough money to buy you $80 jeans. Especially with the economy the way it is, I know that you’re not alone. I bet there are more kids have to hide their knock-off labels than And back when I was a middle schooler, I had to wear clothes that made me loath life itself. Confidence can ward off a lot of ridicule. A lot of ridicule. Screw ’em. But that brings me to my second point.
Always be nice to everyone. Always. Most likely those kids who are mean and crewel are that way for a reason, much like what Sugar said. Bullies are so insecure that teasing and making other people’s lives a living hell is the only way to ease their problems. Who knows? Maybe their dad beats them up or their mom is a raging alcoholic or their uncle should be in jail for child molestation. You never know. So, be nice. It couldn’t hurt. And maybe if you kill them with kindness they’ll ease up on you. And if you end up in High School with any of them, they’ll have no extra reason to be hurtful towards you. And you’ll have no reason to feel guilty for saying something that you’ll later regret.
And yes. Read, read, read. The greatest escapes and the best of friends are found good books.
The sad, happy, weird, confusing truth is, it gets better, and it also stays the same. Now that I’m a so-called grown up, it remains a challenge to enter a group of strangers and not feel the ghost of 7th grade me wanting to shrink into a corner and disappear. The words of wisdom: “Just be yourself,” “just be friendly” suddenly seem like very good advice that I wish I’d taken more to heart recently.
It really is that simple (AND that impossible). Whether 13 or 45, we’re all just a bunch of knuckleheads trying to figure it out as we go along. It’s the perpetual challenge of being human: to feel comfortable, to feel “enough” inside our own skin, even if nothing outside ourselves is giving us the thumbs-up. The pendulum — at least for me — is in constant motion.
When I first read this column I kept thinking, as someone who was that antisocial nosepicker, even though Sugar is right about this great middle school game of excluding someone to be included, it must not be an easy thing to, in effect, be challenged to be cool to someone branded as uncool. It’s not easy. It takes genuine courage. And there is very little apparent reward, at first. But the big payoff comes later, in subtle ways. You’re learning to be yourself, and that’s something that everyone struggles with at various times of our lives, and I think there’s something truly special about someone who has learned and developed the character to not toss someone under the bus to be accepted by people who do.
The horrors of middle school and junior high do end, but part of that process is building and discovering who you are.
Wilda,
8th grade was the worst year of my life. It has taken many years to get over it and understand it but somehow that year I ended up without any friends. It is actually in reading Sugar’s column and reading all these posts that I think I have finally figured it out. There were people who did want to be my friends, but they were ‘losers’ in the popular kids’ eyes so I didn’t want my stock to plummet even further by being associated with them. So I chose to be alone. I hid in the bathroom during lunch. I pretended to be very interested in my piano class and asked to be allowed to practice there during lunch. I wandered the halls and outside. I went to the library. I spread myself around these locations as evenly as possible hoping no one would notice. I realize now that that in that dark bathroom stall the most important part of me was born: my strength and independence. I learned to be comfortable alone, with my thoughts. I’m a very social person now, don’t get me wrong. But I learned how to cope on my own. I learned how to tell the difference between who I am and who others think I should be. I learned that it is truly better to be alone than in bad company, which gave me the courage to eliminate people from my life much later on who were no good for me – even when I had no one else to immediately turn to. These are important lessons. But I also wish I had learned the lesson Sugar and so many other posters are trying to teach you now, at your age. Life would have been easier for me at your age if I had befriended the so-called ‘losers’. I would have probably made solid friendships based on mutual affection and trust, rather than the shallow cliques you probably long to join. In high school I finally became more brave and stopped caring what other people thought of my associations. And that is exactly what you should do now. You don’t have to be best friends with nose-picker, but you can find other kids who are also cliqueless or shy or fat or have acne or greasy hair or cheap clothes or weird laughs . . . and Em was absolutely right. It gets easier, but it stays the same. I am 30 years old, successful, attractive, funny, with more true friends than I suspect most people have . . but I move about ever 2 years (by choice) due to my career and find myself having to start over. I still freeze up inside when I walk into a room full of strangers. I still have to give myself the mental pep talk, “ask people questions about themselves! People love talking about themselves!”. It still takes everything I have to go up to a group of people and introduce myself and make small talk. Many of us will always feel that way. But doing something even when you’re scared to do it (like befriending nose-picker, talking in front of crowds, driving in NYC during rush hour) is what bravery is. Its only brave if you’re scared. So be scared. Then do it anyway.
I love how many great comments this letter spurred– thanks both Sugar and Wilda!
The part where Sugar talks about life outside of school– it’s so easy to forget that that exists. But finding extracurricular activities either inside or outside of school can really help. Try volunteering at places if you get the chance (hospital, senior home, the pound, an after school program for younger kids). Or take up dance classes or music classes if that’s possible. Or take up hobbies, like sports or crafts. Or as many people suggested, read more! Write stories, draw, start doing theatre. I changed schools pretty much every other year all throughout elementary/middle/high school, and I was lucky in that I could usually make friends, but it got tougher as I got older. Switching schools between 8th and 9th grade wasn’t too bad because I was moving into a school on another military base, so we’re used to having to make new friends all the time. But between sophomore and junior year of high school, I moved back to the States and into a school that was more stable in terms of the population. I joined choir, I joined theatre… even people who didn’t “fit in” would fit in some way, because we had to work together to put up our performances. Plus, when you’re sharing an interest, it’s a lot easier to strike up a conversation. Now, almost 5 years later, I still think fondly about those activities, including about the people who drove me up a freakin’ wall!
Another great thing about taking up other activities is that if you’re considering college in the future, they always ask about extra curricular activities. I’m sure that all seems really far away for you right now, but believe me, it’ll sneak up on you reaaaaaally quickly. So not only are you increasing your chances of making friends and having a good time, you’re making yourself a hotter candidate for high education. Which means you’re upping your chances of getting into a college that fits your personality well, which means you’ll have really awesome friends in college, too 🙂
Good luck, darling! Be strong!
Seventh and eighth grades were hell on Earth for me. We moved from the city where I’d been born and raised up to that point to a big city 700 miles away. It was late April, and there were only six weeks left to go in seventh grade, and I got sent to the new (public) school anyway. It was beyond traumatic. The new kids were very wealthy and snobby and immediately started tearing me to shreds. I also got made fun of for being smart and a year younger than they (and thus not as far along in the, ahem, “development” department). There was a constant barrage of sexual remarks I had no idea how to respond to. The only girl who was nice to me was relentlessly teased for “riding the short bus,” but I didn’t care.
Things were no better in the fall. It got so bad I had to transfer out of that school in October. I transferred to a different public school in a less-wealthy area, and like magic, the problems evaporated. My grades returned to their usual As, I made friends, and the only cost was that my mom had to drive me to and from school every day for 8 months. Once I hit high school, I went back to the school in my district and everything was fine.
Seventh and eighth graders are the cruelest creatures on the planet. These things happened to me 25 years ago and I still remember them vividly. So Wilda, you’re not alone. I, too, would start by trying to be nice to the nose-picker. There may be more to him than meets the eye. And hang in there, and let your light shine. Like attracts like, and I’m sure there is someone at your school who has similar interests and ideas who would love to be your friend.
Yay!
I think Sugar hit exactly the right mark, myself.
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