Remember When

You were young and being popular was such a wonderful dream? If you were, you loved it, and if you weren't, you aspired to it? You just wanted to be picked first, invited everywhere, confided in the most, sought after on the playground regularly, and surrounded by people who loved and adored you? You wanted someone to sit with lunch to swap your mom's homemade uber-fiber oatmeal, rasin, carrot, sunflower seed "cookie" for your friend's uber-processed negative-health benefits Oreo? You wanted someone to pair up with to do out-loud reading or times tables. Someone to sit under the table with who would try to pierce your ear with a dull safety pin because your completely unhip parents wouldn't let you get it done the right way? You dreamed of overnight parties to be smooshed into a room with 8 other girls who giggle and talked and crowded you?

Sigh.

All I wanted today was to be totally unpopular and left alone, and ignored to meander through the playground alone and sit on the swing in silence, even though there was a really cool lego tower that matchbox cars went through and a dozen open mouthed kisses waiting to be received and the harsh reality that my body perfectly resembles a jungle gym, and 12 half songs to be heard and a swimming pool to be loudly advertised about, and, water bottles demanding to be shared, and nary a solo visit to the bathroom to be had.

I wish I was a lonely outcast.