Following the Popular Girl

My first lesson about popularity was a cruel one. I was in the fifth grade, and everyone in the class had to draw a poster publicizing the school’s fundraising cake walk. I did a bang up job etching two Care Bears walking hand-in-hand amongst cupcakes, and to top it off, I used the word “awesome” in the promotional language. All was perfect until it came time to vote on the best poster. Bernie, short for Bernadette, wore her hair feathered back, her collar up, and presented her poster first. It was a large, grinning muffin with a lame promotional tagline written in poor cursive, but it won. I sat back in complete awe and disgust, my championship work of art defeated by a fucking, blue muffin. Why?

As the years went on I was picked last for sports teams, failed at bids for class elections, and never managed to be “employee of the month” at my shitty, high school burger job. By age 16, I came to the realization that I was not popular, nor did I give a fuck. There was great value to floating under the radar, and as a grown up, currently working in the field of event production I revel in doing my magic behind the scenes.

Popularity hasn’t crossed my mind in years, until tonight. We attended the annual neighborhood holiday dinner. It was our effort to meet a few new people, and find out if this neighborhood was as vanilla as I had predicted. Thankfully, we knew the first couple who hosted the beginning portion of the neighborhood party. We felt comfortable in their home, poured ourselves some wine, and tried to mingle. We thought people in the neighborhood would be happy to meet us given the previous owners of our house.

We are the third owner of a house built in 1997. The first owner was bad news: lots of fighting, a messy divorce, and the neighborhood association had to file a lien against the property for uncollected homeowner’s dues. We put an offer on the house when the first owner was still living here, but we hadn’t sold our old place, and he didn’t want to wait for the money, so he ended up selling to a nice couple with two kids. The second owners lived in the house for exactly four and a half months, then moved because the husband was from the East Coast and couldn’t deal with the Northwest. We purchased the house from the family’s relocation company, and only met them once.

Unfortunately, for me, in that short four and a half months, the wife managed to meet and make BFF with half the broads in this neighborhood. She gathered with them for mommy groups, hosted the regular Bunko game, and had the same Jenna Elfman haircut as the rest of them. She was most likely a member of the Neighborhood Exercise Squad, but that might be purely speculation on my part.

When we introduced ourselves and divulged our address, we were met with a hint of disappointment. “Ooohhh, that was so and so’s house. We really loved her.” I guess it was a bummer to learn that their bestest buddy’s replacement was a cynical, punk rock Jew who *gasp* works instead of staying home with her child. How could I possibly take the place of the Katie Couric wannabe that used to occupy this dwelling?

I didn’t mind the subtle lamenting at the fact that I lived where their friend used to, it was the outright and blatant disappointment that left me with the same feeling that I remembered from the 5th grade drawing contest. How fucking rude can you be! One can reasonably expect children to have little regard for the feelings of others, since they are indeed still in the process of emotional development, but women in their late 30s/early 40s should know better.

One of the bitchier chicks seemed to have an extremely hard time letting go of it, and went into detail about how close she and the previous owner were. I smiled while thinking she should seriously get over it. Apparently, to make matters more difficult on my part, the former owner still emails her friends here in the neighborhood on a regular basis from her new home on the East Coast. Thankfully, I’m able to approach this situation with a lifetime of experience dealing with the bitter end of popularity.

At the end of the night, when the bitchy one went on and on about her long, lost friend, I listened with half-assed attention all the while thinking, I know you went walking with her everyday, and I know your daughters played together, I guess it’s too bad that I own her fucking house, and she’s never coming back. Then I left the party the same way I did after all of these years, under the radar and not giving a fuck.