Homework Dued 9/30

Kenneth Ngai

Tab Hunter once said “I don't care whether people like me or dislike me. I'm not on earth to win a popularity contest. I'm here to be the best human being I possibly can be.” When I was younger I used to be deathly afraid of a lot of things. I would be afraid of the English essays, bullies, popular kids and the usual stuff middle school kids would be afraid of. However, the biggest fear I had was what people would think of me. I would be afraid of what If I was considers “popular” and “cool” or if I was “weird” or a “geek”. This was really important to me as I always wanted people to like me and think I was “cool”
When I was trying to impress the “popular” kids on a good day, I would be wearing a graphic t-shirt or a sports t-shirt. When I would be wearing a graphic t-shirt, it would have something from what is “popular” like Mario from Super Mario Brothers. The shirt would be complete black. Then on the front it would have some clever saying. Then it would have the image of Mario or a 1-Up mushroom that would appear in the game. However, only the “nerdy” kids would get the joke of the shirt and the cool kids would just say “nice shirt”. When it was from a sports team, the shirt would be a dark navy color. The color would be the color of the Hudson River. The shirt's front has the Yankee symbol on my left chest of the shirt. The symbol is a capital “n” with a “y” on top. On the back of the shirt it would usually be the number on the player that I was representing. Some days it would be number “2” for the captain Derek Jeter. On other days it would be number “42” for Marino Rivera. The number and the last name of the player would be in white. With a shirt, I would usually wear a dark blue jean and a pair of Nike shoes. I would walk down the locker filled hallway with some “swagger” in my step and just being really happy. I would be saying “hi” to girls and giving high fives to the guys. The hallway of my middle school would smell like a blend of cafeteria food and cleaning products. It wouldn’t be an intoxicated smell. However, it was actually an interesting smell that would make me glad the school was clean and we had “fresh” food to eat on a daily basis. A good day for me would when I feel like I can do anything. In middle school that would be having a good game in a game of basketball, having something good for lunch like pizza or it would be getting a good test score. I didn’t know why I need to impress these so called “popular kids”. I mean shouldn’t we all be accepted for who we are. I did not realize this at all when I was younger. As I look back and see where these people are at, they haven’t done anything great or special. They didn’t become actors or famous singers. They were just like me. This makes me regret about how I didn’t spend more time to the people who might actually be special and have some unique talent. But made me mad about how I thought had to change who I was; just to be consider “cool”. That’s something I wish I could have changed.