What Now

CHARMING

Prologue: I wore my old charm bracelet on Sunday for the first time in many years. I don't know if I've even worn it since I've been married, which may be why Steve asked me about one of my charms. It reminded me of this story.

When I was in the 10th grade, I was voted "Class Favorite" and also voted in as a class officer (I don't remember which one, though.) These were mainly honorary titles that didn't matter very much except that you got your picture in the yearbook on the opening page for your grade section. At the time, I was thrilled, of course, because who wouldn't want to be everyone's favorite?! I was also kind of confused. Seriously, normally I wasn't the kind of person to have been voted anything, except maybe for class weirdo. I'm not kidding. Go ask my classmates, I'll wait...

*waits patiently*

See? Told ya.

Anyways, later that year for my birthday or Christmas, my mom got me two charms for my charm bracelet that had those two uh...achievements (probably not the best word, but you get what I'm trying to say) engraved on them. I was tickled over it all, and I wore them proudly, as only an adolescent and rather naive girl could do. It's not that I flaunted the fact that I was apparently secretly loved by my classmates, but I didn't mind being reminded of that fact myself. Shut up! :)

I didn't wear my bracelet often, because I'm clumsy and I break things. Since the bracelet originally belonged to my mother when she was a teenager, I didn't want to destroy it, so I usually only wore it on special occasions. When I became a senior and began to dress up more often (can't remember why that was) the bracelet became something I wore more often.

One day while I was wearing it, and talking to one of my classmates, he took notice of the charms and we started talking about them. When we got to those two charms, I happened to mention that I had no idea how or why I was voted as a class favorite or class officer, because I didn't become "popular" and I had even heard someone once say "how did SHE get voted as THAT?" (Yeah, nice, right?) The guy I was talking to kind of looked embarrassed and admitted to me that in the 10th grade he had a crush on me, and since he was asked to help count votes he fixed the numbers so that I came out the winner.

Oof. Yeah, humble pie is incredibly bitter. :)

I have to admit that it was an incredibly sweet gesture, but it would have been nicer never to have known that the whole thing wasn't real. I mean, I appreciated his honesty, but I was left feeling kind of dumb. Even now I feel slightly guilty that, even though in reality they were stupid, meaningless titles to hold, that the person who really deserved it got cheated. For me it was an unexpected surprise, for some of those other girls it was probably way more important.

So there it is the story of the mysterious, discordant charms on my bracelet, and my one shining moment of "popularity!"