All The Cool Kids

I might have mentioned this before, but I was a geek, nerd, outcast, social reject, etc., you get the point. As as child I tried very hard to get noticed by the popular kids. When it became obvious to me that I was working toward an unobtainable goal, I gave up and simply tried to be me. I never, however, let go of the desire to one day be more than them and to be able to show them that success whatever it may be. I just can't completely let go of that insecurity and I still find myself on the outside looking in.

On the twitter, along with following my actual friends and contemporaries, I have chosen to follow who I think are the cool kids. The other day one of them asked all those strangers follwing her why we were stalking her. I replied that I try to follow the cool kids and live vicariously through them. I am still that geek, hoping that they will turn around, notice me and realize that we would get on famously. More often than not, I still go unnoticed my those I deem cool and even though I know that it shouldn't bother me that people I have never met and will probably never meet don't pay attention to me, it brings back those juvenile high school feelings of rejection.

Every once in a while something will happen to make me question my invisible geek status. Usually that thing will be a comment left on a blog feature of my work. A comment like this, "I've loved her work for ages." or "I've been a fan of her work for sometime.". They always make me stop and audibly utter, "Really?". Then I sit and wonder if there are in fact people who think that I am one of the cool kids? Are there people out there who wish that I would turn around and notice them, 'cause that's really weird to me. Sure I get the occasional odd follow on twitter from someone I don't know, I assume that they are just randomly picking people by their avatars, but is it possible that a few are, dare I saw, fans?

I have not accepted this scenario at all, though I do entertain it from time to time. When I imagine that it is all true I get a little sad that even if it is, I doubt that Internet fame is something I could lord over my childhood cool kids. I can never go back and redo my childhood, though I don't think I would even if it were possible. That rejected kid I was developed a great, albeit strange sense of humor and relatively healthy sense of self. It is that kid that bonded over a similar past with the rejected kid that was my future husband. I know I'll never be that cool kid nor friends with the cool kids I live vicariously through on twitter and really that's fine.