Hope for Ugly Ducklings?

June 4, 2010

This blog is awesome. I like that it offers hope even while we’re laughing at these poor, sad, dweeby nerd-children.  I would totally submit to it, except that there would be a “hmmm, she’s not really all that much better now…” factor to my submission and that just would be awkward for all involved.

Just the same, I really do always always always win these contests. I was officially the world’s most awkward, gangly, giant-pink-glasses wearing, short-thick-puffy-perm-triangle-head, “creative” accessories queen of the nerds.  We had this office contest once, where everyone brought in the worst pictures of themselves they could find. It was all fun and games  (“You were so pregnant!” “I wore funny pants!”) until I set my two pictures down. A hush settled over the office. In awe, my co-workers gaped and gawked at these sad, amazing, nerdy pictures, all the more inspiring for the total lack of self-consciousness the kid in them exudes. I thought I was hot. I thought I looked good. And that is what makes these pictures true marvels; they aren’t the usual pics of hunched-over, downcast pre-teens who look profoundly uncomfortable in their own pimply skin. No, these are pictures of a girl so nerdy, so weird, that she didn’t even know enough to be ashamed of it.

I’m kind of proud of this; to me the pictures show how happy anybody can be in their own head, despite the world. But for everyone else, (especially peeps who were popular kids and only awkward in the way everyone was: “I wore Eastlands! I tight-rolled my pants! Ha!”) there seems to be some sort of willful societal rejection in these pictures, and it clearly makes them squirm. I enjoy that. It’s what I try to do with much of my writing. Upend the social order! Even just enough to make the laughter a little uncomfortable, a little forced. Just a little.