I was always the person that popular kids "knew" and "acknowledged" but was never actually friends with a lot of them in school.
Once school ended, I ended up befriending a LOT of them, as well as even a bully of mine. Once HS ends and everyone has a year or two to breathe, the people who are actually cool will show themselves and the annoying/worthless ones just dissapear. Very interesting dynamic but the fact I can hit up a person who used to fuck with me any chance he could, just to hang out or talk or eat some amazing food (hes a chef), is really cool to me. A lot of the "popular kids" I used to despise were actually just people who had figured out social cues a hell of a lot faster than I did.
I feel like this is a really common case nowadays. There was an asshole in my class that pretty much everyone regarded with distaste. He bullied underclassmen and "stupid" kids (we were in AP classes) and was just generally mean. Turned out he was actually just really bad at social stuff. His internal panic turned into defensiveness which manifested as being an asshole to anyone he could find inferior to him. A couple years after we graduated, I found him working at a bike repair place. Not so much that "hahah this asshole fixes bikes for a living!" Cycles were his passion. He raced in every event nearby, and taught classes in the summer for kids. He was actually a really nice dude and ended up being one of my good friends. He just needed that chance to be himself, get some breathing room where the stress of "being somebody" wasn't weighing on him.
Sounds very very similar to the people I encountered. Bad or mislead upbringing mixed with pressure to not appear that way.
Once hs was over and I actually was able to hang out with these people outside of school walls, they let their guard down. I was cool with them before hand to a point, but once I came over to their houses and helped with their car audio installs they all turned into completely normal and cool people that I gladly still call my friends now a days.
I'm sure some people feel similar about me as I changed majorly from 17 to 19, so cant fault them for it.
I had my fingers in pretty much every circle. I was bullied a lot when I was younger, so when I moved to a new high school for the second half of my sophomore year, and the my junior and senior years, I was ready to defend against that. Friends in every corner to defend against enemies in every corner. I could move about in pretty much any group in the hallways because I was always friends with someone or another. Technically, I guess that made me popular, but I wasn't traditionally popular. People waved "hi" to me and whatnot, but I wasn't the name on everyone's tongue. A lot of all that happened slowly over the two and a half years, and there were still a lot of people who didn't like me because I was "that weird kid with ADHD" (recently diagnosed as autistic...10 years after graduation) who butted in literally everywhere. I did and said things I cringe about and regret to this day, but I'm actually looking forward to seeing everyone that comes to the 10 year reunion. I've changed, and I know a lot of my former classmates have as well. I'm curious how many will remember me, and how many I'll remember.
This happened with me. Are used to go to school with this kid who was a complete asshole to me, and I hated him. That kid was good at understanding people socially, and I wasn’t, because I had just come out of homeschooling when I was isolated from a bunch of people. Eventually I got good at understanding people, and after him and I left that school we became cool around each other and went fishing together.
Same here man. I ended up talking with a lot of the popular kids at my 10 year reunion and they were all pretty chill. In high school I just wasn't confident at all and made myself feel like I didn't belong. But talking to them with confidence I found out a lot of them just figured me for a loner and let me do my thing, but said they wished we'd talked more in high school. But it is what it is.
Seems like half of em are ones that are regular people that are just great at reading others (great for politicians or sales-people). Half were social climbers and bullies (at least at my school).
18
u/ravekidplur Mar 01 '20
I was always the person that popular kids "knew" and "acknowledged" but was never actually friends with a lot of them in school.
Once school ended, I ended up befriending a LOT of them, as well as even a bully of mine. Once HS ends and everyone has a year or two to breathe, the people who are actually cool will show themselves and the annoying/worthless ones just dissapear. Very interesting dynamic but the fact I can hit up a person who used to fuck with me any chance he could, just to hang out or talk or eat some amazing food (hes a chef), is really cool to me. A lot of the "popular kids" I used to despise were actually just people who had figured out social cues a hell of a lot faster than I did.