
Mom, I need you and Dad to get a divorce. My mom was stunned by it. I went on to explain how they were holding me back from ice cream, and how the only real solution to this horrible discrimination was for them to get divorced. I'm sure if I were older, I could have pulled together some statistics, a chart perhaps, but after my main argument of "ice cream is really good" had quickly become tiresome, I decided to give up. It was the first time in my life that I had truly come to the idea that sometimes, people were going to get things that you wanted, and there's nothing you can really do about it.

But my senior year, superlatives nominations came out. For all of you who live under a giant rock, superlatives is a popularity contest where you choose people that didn't really speak to you through high school and assigned them to glorified labels. Then, they would live in the back of your yearbook as a reminder that you're really jazzed that high school is something that only lasted four years. In the midst of the nominations, I rallied for my brother to be nominated as "Friendliest," because Casey really is the friendliest person I've ever met. He's much nicer than I will ever be, and it's not even in a fake way. If we could get Casey on the ballot, he would win because not voting Casey friendliest is like watching a cat video on YouTube and saying, Eh, I guess it's funny. Eventually, Casey would not only appear on the ballot, but also go on to win Friendliest. To my surprise, my name appeared on the ballot twice: once for Most Likely to Succeed, and once for Mr. South-Doyle (with or without the hyphen, which is a point of contention in the South Knoxville community). I had always assumed that Josh Wesley would take the coveted third spot; after all, he was one of the most attractive guys in our class with one of the most dashing personalities. He beat me for the coveted role of Othello in our AP Senior English class, and I don't even think it had to do with him being black. Josh Wesley didn't need affirmative action. Josh Wesley was affirmative action.
But even Josh was not competition for the two other nominees. In essence, I was just the wild card vote that happened to slide in a solid performance of quirky commentary and self-deprecating humor in the final hour. Competitor one, Ryan, threw all the great parties at his house. I had never been to one, but rumor had it that there was alcohol there sometimes. I had, sadly, never been around alcohol up to this point. Even at 18 years old, I became slightly paranoid when I swallowed some of the mouthwash while brushing my teeth. I once saw an episode of Dr. Phil where teenagers would drink mouthwash to get drunk, and then they started doing other stuff like crystal meth and watching porn. I admired Ryan from afar, but I knew that I could never be Ryan... not in high school, at least. Competitor two was Jonathan, who was Ryan's best friend. I never remember him playing football before, but he was the quarterback of our football team senior year. He broke his leg or did something really bad to it, the details escape me, but he managed to return for the final game. That year, he led the team to its best record in five years. In addition, they had been quite popular for some time. They were a part of the popular-Christian circle, which goes a long way in East Tennessee. I could never break into that circle because my opinion of Passion of the Christ learned more toward a horror movie as opposed to "an unbridled cinematic depiction of Christ's love." (I threw up afterward.) Obviously, in this equation, I was going up against Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain for the Oscar. I, of course, was Quevenzhane Wallis. It was really more of an honor than anything to be considered for the prized role.
I would go on to win the category of Most Likely to Succeed, which is the equivalent of a BAFTA in the high school superlative circuit. And as I'm sitting here working on this in Washington D.C., three cigarettes, two Cokes, and a piece of cake in, I'm kind of wondering if the voters got it right. Sure, I made it to D.C. and I'm working on my Master's, but the biggest accomplishment of my day was getting everything I needed from the grocery store after three attempts in six hours. That doesn't quite scream "Excellence in Life." I'm working on solidifying a job for after my internship ends that doesn't require me to take food from one location to another. I give myself a high five when I remember to pay my utility bill before they send the late notice, and I purposefully schedule my work and academic duties around new episodes of Grey's Anatomy. I don't know if that's what would qualify me as "successful," but I guess in the grand scheme of things, I've done most of it kind of right.
But I guess after 99 blog posts and 22 years of life and multiple successes and failures, I have learned one of the Rolling Stones' most important life lessons: You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need. And as for the things that we want, but we don't talk about them because they seem silly... well, I think it's kind of silly to not talk about them. No, not everyone can be a singer or an actor or an astronaut or a writer, but if no one ever took the time to say the silly thing that they wanted, then no one would ever become any of those things. I didn't get my banana split, and I've lost a decent number of popularity contests in my day, but that doesn't stop me from announcing to the world what I want anyway. If it means enough to you, you'll figure out a way to make it happen. (Unless it involves you scheming to get your parents divorced. Don't do that.)
No comments:
Post a Comment