Now that the song’s in your head…

I saw this meme come through my Facebook newsfeed this morning.  What’s interesting is that I had to do a double-take.  The person who posted it was someone who I indeed consider a “cool mom.”  Someone funnier and smarter and more liked than myself.  Someone who I could never fit in with, because I was too much of an outcast.  Too boring.  Too dorky.  Too weird.  Too…. something.  Too anything.

I’m just not a cool kid.

I am the odd man out in every group I’m ever part of, even if it’s my own group!

I’ve done this thing.  Every year, for the past five years, I’ve hosted a conference.  Every year 300 to 400 people gather together to play, to learn about unschooling and gentle parenting, to make new friends, and to just generally enjoy each other’s company.  Nothing ever makes me feel like less of a cool kid.  There’s always at least one moment (usually there are several) where I stop and look around.  I’m by myself, because I’m usually by myself.  And I look around, look at all the happy socializing and I go:

Nope, wouldn’t fit in with that group.

Wouldn’t fit in with that group either.

That group wouldn’t even let me sit with them.

Wow, I’m the most lonely, uncool person at my own party.

And on the one hand, I’m okay with it.  I am.  I’m NOT like everyone else.  I’m an awkward, dorky, unique little weirdo, and I like it that way.  I like me.  But, oh, on the other… what must it feel like to fit in, just once?  To not be the outcast?  To not be the black sheep?  To not come from a social gathering berating myself for every awkward thing I said, or thought, or did, but instead feel…. confident, like I’d behaved like I actually belonged?

And then these memes come along, and my poor little outcast brain goes, “Wait.  What?  IT’S NOT JUST ME?!”

I think the cool kids are just a mirage.

We’re all a bunch of misfits.  I think what we all have in common is that we all feel like the outcast, at least from time to time.  We all suffer from impostor syndrome.  We all have to fake it sometimes.

I mean, granted, some fake it better than others, but they fake it nonetheless.

And if I think about it, really stop and think about it, would I even WANT to be one of the cool kids?  Well, no.  Not if it meant compromising who I am.  Not if it meant squeezing my square pegged self into a round shaped hole.  Not if it meant doing or saying or going along with anything that wasn’t 100% authentically me.

All I can do is do me.  And if I do happen to approach your group, know that it took a lot for me to do so.  Know that my self-consciousness is second to none.  And know that I really DO genuinely want to be your friend…. and that if you can handle someone who trips over air, awkwardly stumbles through long stories that have no point, and chokes on her own spit…. We’ll all get along just fine.