Paradox of the High School Cheerleading Drama Queen

You know those eureka moments that come along once in a while? All of a sudden it's like a veil has been lifted and you see clearly for the first time? Like one of those really annoying allergy commercials? Anyway, I had one recently that was 16 years too late...

  

When it comes to reminiscing about high school you fall into one of two groups: You either loved it and had a blast or someone couldn't pay you $60 million dollars to return and relive the boorish hell you had finally escaped. I fall into the latter group.

High school, for me, felt so small. I had this deep-seeded feeling that something bigger, no huge!, was out there for me, and if I could just survive my outrageous 10pm curfew, my almost-as-strict-as-the-mom-in-Carrie mom, my bitchy fellow cheerleaders, and chemistry; I could go claim my destiny.

My inner-circle of cheerleading friends consisted of a tight-knit group of rotating girls (depending on who was fighting with whom, who had dumped her friends to hang out with the boyfriend she was about to lose her virginity to, who had found more popular friends to hang out with, and who had just been dumped by the boy she had lost her virginity to and was returning to the flock.) These were the girls I hung out with on the weekends; however you hung out with all the cheerleaders during school, after school, before school and during all the extra-curricular cheerleading activities. So basically, we were all friends like it or not. It was a lot of work. But also a lot of fun. I loved cheerleading. I also loved being a cheerleader. We wore our cute uniforms with short skirts to school at least twice a week. We danced and tumbled and built pyramids. We rode the buses to football games while singing songs and we won awards at cheerleading camps and competitions. Cheerleading was the one thing I enjoyed about high school. It gave me the group I belonged to and, to be redundant, I loved wearing my uniform to school.

So here comes my eureka moment. I was recently talking to my best friend who also went to high school with me. She was on the drill team (losers) and an acquaintance in school but we became close in college once we discovered our mutual love of alcohol and parties, hence becoming each other's "girl friend" when invited to parties and asked to bring "girl friends" with us. 

We were discussing high school and she mentioned how she had had a lot of fun and I was telling her how much I had hated it. She half-jokingly replied, "Well that's because you had to hang out with cheerleaders."
....
She had no idea the knowledge she had just hit me upside the head with. What was so obvious to her: that cheerleaders were vapid, flaky, and catty, had eluded me for years. And that the best part of my high school experience was also responsible for my misery. The veil was lifted.

We had DRAMA. And I hate drama. Rumors were rampant. Someone wrote a scathing letter to the mom of one of the cheerleaders about what a slut she was and put my return address on the letter! One cheerleader slept with another's boyfriend. One cheerleader got her (ex)boyfriend expelled after accusing him of statutory rape after he dumped her! This one girl wanted to be on top of the pyramid but no one wanted to try and lift her hefty (this was us being bitchy as she was not fat... just not tiny) ass in the air. Oh, and the stealing. Many cheerleaders had sticky fingers. And on and on and on. And somehow I still was blissfully unaware that the company I kept was one of the reasons I never felt comfortable in the purgatory that was high school. I was a cheerleader! Life was good!

Over the years my friends have become exponentially more awesome. And it makes perfect sense. In high school you exist in this microcosm and your friends are the best people out of the small group you know. I chose the sweetest and most genuine cheerleaders to be friends with which happened to be 3 girls out of 15 or so. Slim pickings. (And let me say I loved these 3 girls dearly and we've grown apart but they are still wonderful.) But as you get older you meet so many more people. And you pick the most bad-ass people out of the thousands of people you come in contact with to be friends with. And you have work, drive, determination, music, the place you choose to live and the bars you frequent in common whereas in high school you only know the 400 kids in your grade and the only thing you have in common is your parents decided to raise you in the same neighborhood.

But back to cheerleading. High school sucked because I had to hang out with cheerleaders. Eureka!

Because you couldn't pay me $60 million to go back and relive high school, I will never know if had I chosen not to be a cheerleader and had selected a different crowd to spend most of my school days with, if perhaps I would have enjoyed high school a little bit more. So instead I take solace in the pictures of me in my super cute cheerleading uniform knowing I will never have to return to that age, that school, and that era of my life.