Ten years ago I used to write poems and essays in a notebook aspiring to be popular.
Believe me, the content I produced at the time surely would not have motivated many clicks, or driven user generated content, or been linked to a sundry of web sites that were a half decade away from being created.
But, at the time, I wanted to be the person everyone at Rockledge High School knew and the man the good looking girls would want to sleep with. I wanted to be so well-known that freshmen aspired to be like me and recent graduates sought my time as validation they still mattered.
All of this came to mind when I stumbled across this column published in the Washington Post last month about branding. A humor columnist, who has a pair of Pulitzers, mocked the concept of people in journalism trying to make their name outside of their increasingly slipping work, stating “because we know that, in this frenetic fight for eyeballs at all costs, the attribute that is most rewarded is screeching ubiquity, not talent.”
That specifically brought back the summer before the Patriot Act, and my quest for adoration.
Admittedly, it was a highly egotistical pursuit. Perhaps it was an overreaction to being an overweight, backup placekicker with few friends. A person no one particularly missed once I slid out the door of my Sarasota high school, rarely to return.
Whatever it was, overhearing the tales of classmates copulating, or at least tell detailed stories of debauchery, led me to believe it was possible for me as well. In hindsight not becoming a Lothario was probably for the best.
A decade later everyone who would have been a candidate became a friend.
The girl who was kind enough to be my first date evolved into someone where we would hold long discussions on conservative politics. Another friend became a reminder that happiness and good things do happen to genuine people. And a third is an inspiration to follow my dreams—even if both our careers are not as successful as others would have imagined at this point in our lives.
As for the person who was to be my prom date? Well, in typical Will Brown fashion there was a miscommunication and it never came to fruition. But, the two of us do talk on occasion and high school is usually not one of our talking points.
Because I refused for any friendship, then or now, to be predicated on the “gauzy filler material, the pale fluff inside decorative throw pillows,” the popularity I always internally craved never came.
I never got the last laugh, or the trophy panties of my classmates. If the corresponding decade is any indicator of the future, there is a strong probability neither will happen.
But if it meant anything, the bespectacled, black placekicker who was admittedly socially awkward, but universally accepted as being smarter than the average Cheez Doodle, did receive the loudest cheer at graduation.
Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb
