The Adventures of Girl: Reminder of Little Life Lessons

This week, I was reminded of a story that happened to me a long, long time ago (gosh, now that I'm 20 I feel ancient!). I thought about how sometimes we are given certain life experiences to help us learn something. They may be painful, embarrassing, sad, or frustrating at times. But if the right attitude is taken with it, the lesson served its purpose.

Once upon a time, I was a freshman at Wilsonville High School. I was the squirmiest thing anyone has ever seen--I looked somewhat like this:

--Big head, Braces, Ridiculously stickly, Big ol' eyes, and just dorky all around--

So anyways, that summer I had decided I liked running a lot and trained with the cross country team a few times. This was very out of my comfort zone, because there were no other freshman there, I was just going by myself with a ton of older people I didn't know. On one of my first workouts, I ran with a Junior and Senior on the team. A car zoomed a little close to us, and next thing I heard were slues profanities I didn't know existed and the bird being thrown up like no other. {If you are a flight of the conchords fan, I hope the image of Bret and Jemain flapping their hands like a bird appeared in your head} But think, I am only 15, extremely innocent, never would have thought to EVER let those things come from my mouth, for ANY reason. Those girls may not have realized it, but I was so scared. I was intimidated beyond belief.

I stayed with cross country when school began, and the first race was after that week of school. I will never forget my first race and what me and my parents feelings were on the sport I had chosen to do. It was a scorching hot day, athletes were puking everywhere, a girl passed out 200 meters before the finish, yea....cross country seemed like the suicide sport. Ok, besides that point. I ran that race and beat the one Senior girl who had mastered the art of the Bird. For purpose of this story, lets name her Cruela Devil. Cruela, a few other girls on the varsity team, and I were doing our cool down run when Cruela turned to me and said "You know, I thought you were going to suck this season. Turns out you are pretty good." ???? um... thanks....

This will be my final anecdote about my freshman XC experience and Cruela Devil before I finally get to the point of what I learned. I was walking down the hall by myself, Dorky as ever, going to English class. Yes, I remember every detail of this like it happened yesterday. Walking by were Cruela and her Army of Skanks (I say that in complete reference to "Popular girls", back then I didn't know what the word Skank completely meant), but Cruela Devil and I were friends, right? I mean we ran together every day, she told me all of her VERY inappropriate stories (which I luckily didn't understand), but I gave her a wave and said hello to her in the hall. Because we were friends. She looked at me, and then looked away and ignored my hello. Pretended I didn't exist. Walked away still giggling with her friends.

I. Was. Crushed.

My lesson I learned is that being nice means a lot more to people than you think. Also throw in the fact that Cruela was older and I could have looked up to her. I could have thought "Man, I guess when I am a senior in high school, I can just treat freshman however I want". Luckily, after that day of being shot down, I made a decision. I was not going to be Cruela Devil. And I hope to say that I succeeded, as I made great friends with everyone on the team each year no matter what age. The other smaller lesson is that freshman can really be as naive as you think. Even if you're not trying to scare someone younger, you usually will anyways. So just keep the Bird to yourself.

And be like these Birds instead: