Popular

My family moved four times between kindergarten and high school, so the kids I knew are always stuck in my mind at the ages they were when I left. And I always wonder what became of the more interesting kids. For instance, I wonder what happened to the girl with the beautiful voice who everyone said would be a Broadway star someday. She sang "Tomorrow" at one of our elementary school assemblies. Is she a singer and actress now, or did she completely turn away from that career path some time during junior high and is now a stockbroker?

From third to seventh grade, I lived in a town where there were two very clear-cut popular people. The most popular girl was (well, I'll change the name) "Amy," and the most popular boy was "Mike."

They were popular for the three main reasons a person could be popular back then:

1. Good at soccer and/or kickball
2. Good hair
3. Very funny; always knew the right thing to say

They could also, of course, be mean, and I was quite far out of their circle. Amy was so popular that when she had a birthday party, she had to invite at least forty people. (I was never one of them, and that was lucky for me, as I would have just spent the whole time with butterflies in my stomach worrying that someone would pick on me and I wouldn't know what to say back.)

An aside: One time, two girls came up to me in art class in fifth grade and said, "Amy hates your guts." Apparently there had been some sort of sleepover party the previous Friday evening when she declared that. Since I was shy and never knew what to say, I sometimes said stupid things as a result. When the two girls said that to me, I just said quietly, "Oh...." and then a few seconds later, when I thought of something, I added: "How can Amy hate my guts? She's never even SEEN my guts!!!" They both smiled, but my brilliant rejoinder did not change my status one bit.

Anyway...once I moved out of a town, I pretty much never heard about those kids again. There was no e-mail then, and maybe I'd exchange phone calls or letters with a best friend for a few months, but eventually they correspondence would trickle off. Usually we only moved about twenty minutes away, to some other grassy New Jersey town, but that was still too far for a play date with an old friend (not that anyone said "play date" then). People's parents just didn't drive twenty miles after school to let their kids play for a few hours.

So when Google searches finally became available over the last eight or nine years, I from time to time would look up the kids from my old elementary schools. I barely found anything about Amy or Mike. Nothing too special happened to them. Amy did some acting with a theater group after college, and she was in a play about domestic violence. In an interview, she said that when she was about 25, she was in an abusive relationship. It's hard for me to believe that Amy had to answer to anyone; she was the queen of popularity when she was ten. No one dared cross her.

Mike does not show up in Google at all except that he played on a recreation golf team at Chelsea Piers and is listed on two team lists. But back in third through seventh grade, when he played soccer and traded witty comebacks in school, many, many girls wanted to "go out with" him (to the extent that 8-year-olds were "going out.") Even some of the unpopular girls he picked on still like-liked him. (I personally never understood that logic, but it was true.)

A few years ago, I reconnected with an old friend from elementary school and found out that Amy and Mike were not the most popular people in high school. They didn't run the student council or captain a sports team. They probably did just fine, but they weren't the king and queen of the school.

They basically have normal lives now, like me. I wonder if they miss the power they had at 10 -- or if that's just how it is in my own mind, because I was always on the outside wondering what that was like.


Comment from a reader:

Your blog post really struck a chord with me today. I thought I was the only one who ever did that--Googled people I went to school with like 10, 15 years ago. I was just like you in school--usually on the outside of things. I wonder where people I went to school with are now in their lives--how similar they are to the kids they were so long ago. (As for me, I usually think I'm pretty similar to my grade school self.) A lot of times I wonder why they hated me so much when I was a kid--if they had a concrete reason, or if it was just decided that one kid had to be picked on back then, and I was unanomously chosen. I think kids who are smarter, or different than the rest in some way usually get picked on. (In my case I was from a lower income family than everyone else and not interested in the designer clothes-makeup-boys stuff all the other girls were into.) Children have trouble befriending kids who differ than them. I think it has something to do with the way they form their fragile self-esteem and identity--they must think their way of looking/being is the only way because if they don't, they'll lose self-esteem, or something like that.  
 
The loveliest surprise I ever got was to learn that a girl I went to public school with, went on to become a major actress. Her name was (is) Dagmara Domincyk. It's funny because when I knew her in school she was soooo shy.

Editor's note: This is Dagmara. Hard to believe she was shy!