I’ve always been prone to live in my own little world. As a child, I created fairy-tale worlds with Care Bears and Barbies, my hundreds of stuffed animals, and MTV. I didn’t pay attention to what was in vogue or what everyone else was doing. I did my own thing, a personality trait that has continued into middle age.
I have not yet figured out if this is inherently a good thing or a bad thing.
I talked to my dad every Sunday morning, usually for thirty minutes or less. He lives about a five-hour drive away from me, so these weekly phone calls are our way of checking in with each other. He was telling me about my niece and soon-to-be niece-in-law, how he didn’t understand them when they were going on about missing their Stanley cups.
I had no idea what he was talking about. Hockey trophies? Or a specific brand of plastic cups, probably used for drinking games?
After googling Stanley cups, I rolled my eyes. Of course, I wouldn’t need a Stanley cup anyway, since my husband calls me Pam, from that series The Thing about Pam, when she’s always walking around with her Big Gulp. If I don’t have a fountain pop, I have bottled water. I don’t drink much else—no healthy smoothies or some gross trendy green juice with kale, no energy drinks, and not even alcohol.
But it’s not just Stanley cups I’m left out of…it’s, well, everything.
Everyone at work was obsessed with Squid Game. I watched the preview and it didn’t appeal to me. Plus, I read all the time—I usually avoid watching foreign language shows and movies. I didn’t jump on The Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead bandwagons until the pandemic, then binged watch them (I adored them both).
I used to say that when I was younger, I followed all the Hollywood trends, but that’s a lie. It was my sister, who was four years older than me, who bought all the Tiger Beat and Sassy magazines. I learned by proxy from her what was in and what wasn’t. I didn’t usually know about celebrity gossip, except that which made magazine headlines at the checkout. I didn’t watch Entertainment Tonight or keep up with the cool stuff, largely because I didn’t like the cool stuff.
I hated Madonna’s fluorescent makeup but did wear bobby socks with heels and bracelets up to my elbows (although I removed them after only a few minutes because it was hard to do much of anything with all those plastic and rubbery rings around my arm). I dabbled in the beaded safety pin craze (you have to be old to remember that one) and quickly grew bored with the friendship bracelet craze. I didn’t rat my bangs because my hair was too fine and it just looked stupid—I, unbeknownst to me at the time, wore my hair like Elaine on Seinfeld, with bangs that were pulled back with a barrette. I did partake in that ridiculous fashion trend of rolling the cuffs of jeans, but that was more because I had to—I was so short that most jeans were always too long for me anyway.
And New Kids on the Block? I’ll pass. I had nothing against them personally, just found their music obnoxious—and I was only eleven at the time. While my fifteen-year-old sister and twelve year old cousin discussed the merits of each New Kid (my sister loved Jordan and my cousin preferred Joey), I found watching my green SweeTart not dissolve in water more interesting.
I found an autobiography I wrote for sophomore English in high school. I was fifteen years old and still glued a picture of the Pillsbury Doughboy on the cover (as well as thirtysomething and 21 Jump Street logos). I devoted chapters to my pets, my fear of spiders, and my delightful pink bedroom. I was surprised I hadn’t written an analysis on Little House on the Prairie. I was oblivious to how uncool I was, but I didn’t care. I loved my stuff. I continued to love early Eighties’ music well into the Nineties, especially when early Nineties’ music turned all grunge or hip hop. I wore a Dirty Dancing t-shirt all through sixth grade no matter how much teasing I received (nowadays, people would use the word bully, I’m sure).
On average, people spend about two and a half hours on social media every day. I spend those hours writing, reading, attempting to complete projects that I’ve had on my to-do list for decades, like a keepsake box with a scrapbook that has accumulated all sorts of junk that it will no longer shut, or finally reorganize childhood photos that have been out of order because of space constraints or type up the table of contents for old music video DVDs. I can’t fathom staring at a phone—or any other device—for over two hours a day and not creating something out of that time.
But this attitude places me on the outs at any social gathering. As an introvert, I already have enough working against me. I feel like Sheldon Cooper at a frat party not partaking in mimesis. Mimesis: An action in which the mimic takes on the properties of a specific object or organism. When one practices mimesis, according to Dr. Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory, it is so the indigenous fauna will accept one as their own. I already look out of place because I’ve shown up wearing a dress and heels, simply because that is what my spring-summer-fall wardrobe consists of. To make me feel like even more of a buffoon, I hardly drink. People think I’m no fun or snobby, or even that I’m judging them for drinking. I don’t care what they do, I’m just not going to drink because it all tastes gross and if I want to ingest empty calories, I’ll do so with a Cherry Coke or a triple layer chocolate cake. (My food pickiness is also a strike against me.)
I couldn’t even abide by the social rules of a neighborhood mom book club. I thought we would read the books and then talk about said books. Neighborhood mom book clubs have nothing to do with reading. They are an excuse for a bunch of moms to get together and sit around and gossip, but they do so under the pretense of a book club just because that sounds better than sitting around and gossiping. On several occasions, general chitchat continued for two hours, then book talk for less than ten minutes, then another hour of small talk. I don’t care about show choir. If I wanted to talk about show choir, I would join a show choir group, not a book club. Most of the random moms who showed up didn’t even know they were supposed to read a book; those that did would say, “Oh, I started it, but I never finished it.” You couldn’t finish one book in a whole entire month? I wanted to analyze the psychic distance of the chosen point of view or how the author integrated historical facts into the story. I was the party pooper of the club—they all probably rejoiced when I stopped coming.
To be someone, you must abide by the trends, the unwritten and unspoken social rules of the gathering, to fall in line with such babblecocky, like grinding up broccoli into your child’s meals or having a fully stocked liquor cabinet but outlawing pop in your kitchen. It’s important to have Coach purses, but dependent upon your group, either brag about its cost or that you found it for next to nothing. You must be able to compare eye procedures or manicures or athletic clubs (even though you never even go). And always aim for buying the biggest SUV or moving into the biggest house. Such pretense must give people’s lives meaning.
I, on the other hand, emulate Emily Dickinson. I’m happy to be a Nobody as opposed to a dreary Somebody. I’m going to wear the all-white dress and not care who mocks me for it. Then I’ll slurp from a Big Gulp while others share pretentious drink recipes as they suck on their Stanley cups.