To Be Mediocre

Who wants to be mediocre, you ask… I do. As crazy as it is, Thursday night’s episode of Scandal posed an important question… Do you want to be mediocre or excellent? As Jake Ballard’s life was replayed before our eyes, I remembered how bad it felt to be that kid. I wanted to be normal. My and Jake Ballard’s home life were different, but the mind escape into mediocrity was the same.

Attending school in my not-so-cool clothes as well as having zero concept of personal hygiene, I envied the ‘normal’ kids. They had clean clothes, clean socks, nice hair and parents who showed up to their school functions. The normal kids had money in their lunch accounts and they were consistently invited to birthday parties.

Being an ugly, dirty, poor and loud child from a broken home (a few times over), I was by no means special, definitely a non-priority. From a young age, I lived with this overwhelming need to be just like everyone else. I wanted to go unnoticed.

Nobody cared whether my clothes were clean, teeth were brushed or hygiene was on par. Well, that’s not entirely true. My elementary crush asked me, “Are you so obsessed with me that you cut your hair to have my same haircut?” When, in reality, I cut my bangs and failed terribly. My third grade best friend also cared when I broke out in some sort of rash and she told the teacher, “I can’t eat lunch with her. Look at how she looks.” To which the teacher responded, “I don’t blame you.” Later, other kids would say, “Didn’t you wear that yesterday?” “Your clothes are dirty,” “You don’t match,” “Do you ever brush your hair?” So, my appearance didn’t go unnoticed.

For some reason, I did not receive the discretion that kids in my social class should receive. I was always noticed for the wrong reasons. I stuck out. Girls, in particular, loved to have a ‘go’ at me. Boys were a tad bit nicer. As my middle school boyfriend said, after seeing a picture of me with my hair done and a little makeup, “Why can’t you always look like that?” He didn’t say that in front of everyone… only two people in the hallway by his locker.

When one, me in this case, grows up knowing that she isn’t good enough to be ‘normal,’ she needs to be normal. She must fit in. It’s not a ‘want’ I had, it was a damn life necessity.

When I was less than 10, I remember asking God why I wasn’t born in another house. He answered back and said, “You’ll be something great one day.” So, I paid my dues.

However, not all the odds were stacked against me, I had some God-given gifts. I was tiny, talented and smart. I excelled in school. I was ‘cute’ too, but didn’t know that until I was almost 20.

After publicly being humiliated about not brushing my teeth in front of people; and being asked, on my high school bus, “You have body odor. Have you heard of deodorant?” I instantly became an obsessive clean freak about my body. It only took one loud humiliating question on a bus trip with 20+ kids, to get me into shape. Never happened again. I learned how to be normal.

Now, I am physically normal. Mentally and emotionally, I am still that loud out-of-place kid who feels like they’ll never belong.

Although I’ve worked hard to be normal, I still don’t fit. People still look at me with judgment. I can see it in their eyes. When I share bad news, peoples’ smiles are a little bit brighter than when I share good news. Their eyes burn through my body from yards away. This causes me to fidget and talk too much, which of course is unattractive and annoying.

Oh, how I want to be mediocre. It’s not in the cards for me. The more normal I become, the more abnormal I feel. In my book, mediocrity is excellence. Some of us are born into ‘less than.’ We have to work twice as hard to be at par because we started out double bogey.