You know me, I'm all about giving roses while people can still smell them. I was on a website forum where someone asked readers to submit stories of the nicest thing a friend ever did for them. This is what came to mind:
Freshman year of high school was off to a very rough start. Those first few months are critical, in my opinion. That's where friendships are born and first impressions are made. In my case, nobody knew who the hell I was. I was awkward and by myself half of the time. All of the girls I liked had no interest in me whatsoever. Even my second round picks weren't interested.
So one day when I was having a really, really, REALLY bad day, we went outside and took a huge panoramic school photo. It was while standing outside for this that I caught the attention of this girl in the twelfth grade. As I'd learned earlier in the month, most of the assholes in the upper classes seek to dehumanize the incoming class by referring to them simply as "Hey Freshman!" So of course, when angry little me heard someone yelling from behind him, "Hey freshman, you ain't in Texas!" This voice, that I'd yet to match a face to, was referring to my Dallas Cowboys coat. People in DC see the logo (the star) as a target to throw insults (and sometimes bullets).
I turned around and saw what to this day remains the singular representation of puberty. My pupils dilated, heart raced and jaw dropped. At the time, I'd seen nothing more beautiful in my life. Her insults at that point were irrelevant. She was talking to me!!! (Be still, my heart) She rambled on about the Cowboys sucking (they did and still do) and other upperclassmen joined the fray. The next day, she came to me at breakfast and offered a semi-apology acknowledging that it was probably an embarrassing and potentially emotionally scarring way to start high school. She said that she would make it up to me.
She sat down and ate breakfast with me. At lunch, she came to my table and, in front of all my irrelevant freshman friends, batted her eyes and asked me why I was sitting with "all these guys" and not over at the table with her. We ate lunch together, to the intrigue of a few of my friends. This went on for a few days. Then one day she asked me to walk with her to the subway and we passed a bunch of girls from my class that I liked. Being the haters in training that they were, I heard em cackling amongst themselves, "Watch this. Ordale, is that your boo?"
To my surprise, and most certainly theirs, she turned around and said, "What do you think and why do you care?" Not technically an answer, but it was better than an ego-deflating, "Hell, no this freshman isn't my boyfriend!" My memory gets hazy after that, because I was in heaven at that moment, but I THINK she held my hand and said something along the lines of, "Go get your own man." She said it jokingly, so they didn't get offended. And the way it was presented, they couldn't really tell if she was really with me or not.
As a 30 year old, all of this sounds silly. I know people who had kids by 14, so the fact that I was excited that some 12th grader held my hand just highlights how much of a late bloomer I was. The point is that, when she said she was going to make it up to me, I wonder if that's what she had in mind. In that moment, I became relevant. Now I'm not gonna lie and say that my life became an Axe commercial, but, in keeping with the whole "my second round picks weren't interested" analogy, let's just say that I started to get some letters of intent.
In a way, she endorsed me. It was like a radio promo. "Hey, I'm a 12th grade girl and when I'm not kicking it with guys my age, I listen to Ordale J Allen." Beyond the whole "it helped me get girls" thing, it was nice to have someone help me navigate the social and political mess that is high school. And for that, I'm forever grateful.
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