I
t is time to revisit a painful period of my life, so just bare with me. Let’s rewind nine years to seventh grade. To be quite blunt, I was a dork and had virtually no friends. (Let’s all feel bad for Nicole, wahhh.) In a school of more than 2,000 students, I was invisible. Well, a girl finally started talking to me and after a few weeks, we were at that exciting point in our blossoming friendship when she was actually going to walk next to me in the hallway. In my lonesome middle school life, that was a big deal. So we’re walking and talking and all is well.
Then I fall down an entire flight of stairs and she never talks to me again. Struggles.
Now I have a confession. In middle school, I was what I like to call a “grossnasty,” which is a colorful way of saying “I was an unfortunate-looking dork who was clueless to my geekdom.”
Picture this.
I was a scrawny, pale, “honors class” girl with a gap between my two front teeth so big my tongue could fit in between it. Not only that, but once the braces were on, the dentist had to pull two clearly visible teeth, leaving giant holes in each side of my smile. If that’s not enough, my vision went downhill in seventh grade and I had to get a pair of black, plastic-framed glasses. (They were NOT stylish like they are now, I can assure you.) To put the icing on the dork-cake, I thought it was a good idea to put my hair in a super-tight ponytail and then drench my head in hair gel so it wouldn’t frizz. All in all, I was the silent, smart girl with glasses, braces, two missing teeth and hair harder than a rock. Even my current best friend knew me as “the girl with the long face.”
Those three or four years spent as a grossnasty were pretty rough, as you can imagine. I just couldn’t win.
Another great aspect of my grossnasty self was my inability to do the simplest things in a normal way. Let’s take laughing for instance. It’s such a simple, carefree thing, how could someone ruin that? I don’t know how, but I did. Instead of laughing, I’d loudly say the word “honk.” And I wouldn’t just say it — it was more of a nasally, goose-resembling yell. I’ll use this joke as an example:
Joke: “What do you call a Mexican with a rubber toe?”
Punch line: “Roberto.”
My response: “HONKKKKKK.”
It was quite an unfortunate habit. And I’m not sure if admitting that well-kept secret was the best idea, but oh well.
Here’s the thing though. You think I’d be embarrassed by all of this, but I’m completely fine. I’m not ashamed because I know that everyone was a grossnasty. If you try and tell me you were always cool, I’ll tell you you’re a liar. It’s an unfortunate stage everyone goes through, with most making it out OK. What’s even better is that unless you tell everyone (like I just did), no one ever has to know about it.
Even though I talk about the awkward middle school years like they’re a bad thing, I really think it all turned out OK. One, because I have devised this theory: For however many years God made me ugly, he will increase my beauty for that same number of years (I still have a while to go considering my prolonged ugliness …). Two, weird people are the most fun. I don’t mean “college girl who honks” weird. I’m talking about being comfortable with the odd side of yourself — like the side that, I don’t know, talks in uncomfortably weird voices with your roommates or maybe enjoys Skyping with your dog (I’m not the only one, I promise). The stranger side of yourself usually is the side that is a little more fun and from what I’ve noticed, people who are confident enough to show that side have the most fun and the most friends. So stop repressing your grossnasty years and holding in your strange habits, because there’s no need to be embarrassed. Rest assured that no matter how weird you are, I can sadly say that I am probably weirder.
