What's Your Word?

For the past week or so I've been reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. (Yes, I realize it's been made into a major motion picture, but I've chosen to read it rather than see it. Generally, I believe the book is always better! But I digress.) While enjoying the book, I came across a section of the book where one character, Luca, challenges the main character, Liz, to sum herself up in one word. The challenger explains to the befuddled Liz that Rome's word is SEX; the Vatican's word is POWER; and Naples' word is FIGHT. In other words, these words describe the personality of the city or at least what a majority of people would think about the city. (Clearly this is during the Italy portion of the book, but it's nothing near a spoiler!) Naturally, our protagonist, Liz, struggles to figure out her word. Interestingly, so do I.

Throughout the years, I've been described in so many ways that it's hard to come up with one word that the majority of my associates (friends and family) could use to describe me. During my childhood, I'd venture to say that my word would have been PRECOCIOUS. I was often told that I'd "been here before" or was "wise beyond my years." During my teens, my word was CONFIDENCE (in every sense of the word). During college, the word became ACHIEVE due to my single-minded focus of becoming a doctor. After college, I believe the word that best described me was IRONY, since life was shaping up to be much different than I'd imagined it.

After much deliberation, I've decided that at this moment my word is MERCURIAL. Look it up. It's a perfect fit, and perhaps it always has been. It's not negative or positive, it just is...me! I think I'll have some t-shirts printed up, perhaps change my twitter name (HA!). On second thought, maybe not because (in keeping with my mercurial nature) tomorrow my word may be different!

And now, as I am consciously choosing economy over verbosity, I ask: What's your word?

Which One Was I?

In a recent conversation with friends, a comment was made that gave me pause.  Actually, the conversation started out a discussion of characters in the movie, Grease.  As my friends and I laughed about the scene where Rizzo dons a blonde wig and mercilessly teases perennial goody-goody Sandy (hearing her sing, "Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee...") we characterized each character in one word bites...Rizzo, bitch; Marty ("Marachino...like the cherry"), slut; Frenchie, ding-bat; and the other girl with the black hair, whose name we couldn't remember, fugly.  (Fugly, for those of you who haven't been around a teenager or who didn't see Mean Girls is a blend of the words f***ing and ugly.) I commented that I couldn't see how no-name girl was fly enough to be a Pink Lady, and one friend reminded me, (and I quote) "There's always a fugly one."  To which the other friend quickly quipped, "I'm not claiming that.  I wasn't the fugly one."

Hmmmm...

The Pink Ladies were a high school clique, a clique that has been replicated in various forms to various degrees over and over.  They dated the hot, bad boys (The T-Birds, in Grease).  In high school, I belonged to a clique, too.  There was a tall one, a youngster with the body of a fully developed woman.  There was a model, who discovered her own beauty rather late in the game.  There was the one who seemed to always have a guy chasing after her, though she rarely deigned to give any of them her full attention.  There was a serial monogamer.  Of course, we had a bad-ass, boss-bitch that organized us and directed the social calendar.  And last but not least there was a smart and sarcastic girl with high expectations for boys, often so high that she was mostly single.  If, as my friend so aptly pointed out, there is always a fugly one, then one of us was unwittingly pulling double duty.

I wish I could say that there were more moments when I didn't believe it was me.  After all, being the one of your clique that rarely had a steady boyfriend and was constantly being relegated to the friend-zone doesn't do a lot for your overall self-esteem. (So, now you know which member of the clique I was!) Yeah, I had the brains (and to be fair, we were all pretty smart), but I lacked the self-confidence to go out and take what I wanted.  I watched as my friends got the attention from the boys I liked.  I was severely admonished if ever the social order was disrupted because I had the audacity to draw attention from a boy that one of them liked first. (Tsk-tsk at the high school girl rules!)  One of the members of my clique actually called me a "jealous bitch" in front of the rest of the group (my personal Gretchen Weiners moment!), and we were still friends afterwards.  WOW!  Why didn't I slap the shit of her as soon as the words left her mouth? I don't know.  Maybe because I realized even then, that her comfort level with my place in the clique was dependent on me never realizing that I could change that place (though, I feel that I eventually did).  Plus, I had other things she didn't.  I knew that she was projecting her own jealousy of my stable home-life, car at 16, and general outlook on life.

For the record, the conversation that spurred this post was had between me, the bad-ass/boss-bitch and someone who would've been in the clique had she not been six years younger than me.  The person who called me a "jealous bitch" was the one who always had guys chasing after her--usually other people's boyfriends.  Sadly, karma is a bigger bitch than I ever was.  We don't talk as much today.  I am still good friends with the tall one, the serial monogamer, and the aforementioned bad-ass/boss-bitch.  And while this conundrum of "the fugly one" stills plays itself out in my adult life sometimes when I am overlooked, referred to as so-and-so's friend (as though my name isn't/wasn't worth knowing or remembering), or remembered only in reference/confused with someone else I can't help but laugh.  Fugly is a state of mind, and to that end I was never that one!

Food for thought: Which one were you?