The Awkward Girl

I don’t know what it was or even why, but I was an awkward girl growing up. Black nail polish, funky short hair, Nirvana t-shirts and baggy pants. My parents were worried. Concerned that I would be forever tainted by the goth group I hung out with. I think I turned out okay, but it came along with a lot of life lessons in between.

I think the most common misconception or assumption is that I was probably a cheerleader growing up, a beauty queen …Miss Popular, or the girl who dated the football captain on the high school team. Anything but. After all, I was that girl. The girl that never got asked to prom. Truthfully. I remember junior prom so vividly. I look back and laugh now. I wonder what ever happened to the boy who made me feel so small.

Awkward Nineveh was on the dance floor with her girlfriend. She was my date.

Popular High School kid walks up and asks to slow dance, to my surprise of course.

I obliged.

30 seconds in, his face goes sour. Shoving me back he exclaimed for all his friends to hear “Why would I ever want to dance with you!?”

The joke was on me. Laughter filled the dance floor. I had a split second to think of something to sarcastically spit back in his face. “Huh, why would I ever want to dance with you!?” I retorted and walked off , unfazed by his cruel joke.

It was that and so many other mean remarks people made at school to me that fueled my inner strength, my mental toughness. “They’ll see,” I’d say to myself.

I remember sitting in science class, Anatomy. Unbeknownst to me, the girl who sat behind me didn’t like me. She would often push her desk into the back of my chair, sometimes repeatedly. Taunting me until finally one day, I politely turned around and told her to “Please stop doing that.”

It only enraged her more, giving her incentive to continue pushing her desk into the back of my chair.

“Push…”

“Push…push.”

With every second that passed, the pushing steadily increased until I snapped. With a mighty heart, and adrenaline pumping through my veins, I turned around …face flushed, pent up anger tore through my hands as I pushed her desk back to the wall.

“I said to STOP!” screaming for all my classmates to hear.

“That’s enough!” said our professor.

It would years later that I randomly stumbled into the same girl in Hawaii. Fate would have it that way. An opportunity for her guilt ridden soul to purge a sorrowful apology to me. She wanted me to know how sorry she was for being “mean.”

These days we call that bullying.

I never saw that high school boy who dissed me at the dance, but I wish him well.

Unfortunately, I know all to well with the stories I have covered that not everyone recovers the way I do. Often times, kids are shamed, made fun of for being different. I don’t know where my fervor came from. Maybe it was in my blood. Maybe it was that my parents had been through so much more turmoil than I ever had living under the Baathist regime in Iraq. Whatever it was, I know not every awkward girl will have that inner strength.

But she should. Because in the end, she grows up…beautifully blossoming into an independent young woman, who looks back at all those moments and is thankful for the lessons she learned.

The joke is no longer on me, she cackles to herself.