Seriously

...I have long (and fake) hair for one day and the guys at work are treating me a little differently. Not that they were ever mean or inconsiderate towards me before, but I am use to being one of the guys more than I am ever considered a girly girl. But the moment I strapped on that wig (and really short skirt. Hey, I had tights on) all the guys at work started treating me like, dare I say it, a lady.



Seriously. The moment I walked into work wearing this ridiculous wig but authentic cheer leading outfit, I went from being nerdy Beckett to "hey how are you doing today". I am very open about my insecurities, at least on this online journal. I don't know where the insecurity comes from but it is there with me always. Outside of not being able to fully look myself in the mirror yet, I still feel like I did when I was in high school. Awkward, short, and not all too put together.

I don't remember if I wrote about the time I was a drama nerd in middle school. I was in the eight grade and as a way to compensate for the homesickness I felt I tried to mirror my life in New York by creating the same one in South Carolina. Moving from the North to the South was literally a change I was not expecting. It didn't help that the first week there, we got into that accident that rendered my face a little more than scratched up for a few weeks. I went from being this 12 year old girl falling into her life in New York, to a 12 year old pre-teen who spent her first summer in South Carolina in her house because of the scars present on my face.

I don't know if you've ever been smacked in the face with an airbag, but not only does it hurt, but it burns. Because of this, my face looked like someone took a fist to it repeatedly. It was difficult then for someone to say I was pretty, when all I could feel and see were these abrasions on my face.

By the time I started school, my face was healed but I was still self conscious and nervous as hell about emerging from my house because of the accident and because being 12 years old at a new school sucks. I tried to mirror my life in the North by doing similar school related activities in SC. I joined the orchestra (because I played the violin in New York), I participated in gym without complaint (because I was a sporty kid in New York) and, more importantly, I joined Drama because in New York I was heavily into plays. But those activities never meant the same thing to me then, the bizarro verision just never had much weight. In the eight grade, I auditioned and was accepted into the semester long drama program (she later admitted that a lot of that had to do with my clear accent). It was the most nerve-racking semester of the year because I was technically still the new girl, and here I was in a class of established thespians. You've seen Glee, don't lie, you know how those drama kids are.

Most of the kids in the program were either popular or super popular. I at the time was neither. I was the new kid, just trying to find my place, just trying to blend in rather than stand out. There was a boy in the class named Ezra, and you'd think with a name like that he would have been nice. But he wasn't. He was popular because he was the class clown, which means that he was "the guy who thought he was funny but was more of a jackass than anything else". A lot of the time we were scene partners because he was the shortest guy in the class (paired with me the shortest girl), but we never got along because I never thought he was funny and he though that I was plain.

One day everyone was sitting around, and someone brought up the conversation of prettiest girls in our grade. I sort of tuned out, until I heard the boys, Ezra mainly, starting to evaluate the girls in the class. When he came to my name and face, he looked at me really hard and said "you're not ugly, but...."

I have lingered on this 'but' for ten years. I feel like it has defined who I am. I am not ugly but "...I am not pretty", "...I could use some improvement" "...I could be pretty if I brushed my hair". The bell rang before he could finish the sentence, before I could hear from this jackass of a 13 year old about my prettiness or maybe lack there of (a few years later, he asked me out. No lie).

So, when I wore this wig on Saturday dressed like a cheerleader and sporting an awesome skirt I never grasped the fact that I may have looked pretty. That Ezra Pressley, was a stupid little jerk, who skewed some sliver of myself that I have yet to gain back

But on Saturday, I may have proved that little fucker wrong.The cafe manager was extra nice, along with the two Stephens, and one Bargain guy, and some customers, who have known to be jackasses, were extra patient on Saturday. I of course didn't care about any of them, I was waiting to see the janitors reaction because we haven't been on the best of terms lately (I've been sick, he's been having a girlfriend. You know, the usual). Needless to say, he did a double take when he saw me at customer service. At first he came over to sign in, and then he lingered for a while, and then he went somewhere and came back because he was looking for janitor stuff.

An hour later, I had to go to the back to get something, and the janitor was close behind. He was very nonchalant when he finally approached me(nice costume, nice wig, yadda yadda yadda). I explained to him that I was Buffy the Vampire Slayer and that my hair itched (because I don't know how to conduct myself in front of attractive boys). He was very nice to me the rest of the evening, offering to drive me home, but I was leaving a couple of hours before him, so I had to decline. But what is more interesting is that a day after donning the wig and outfit, he continued this new fond attention towards me. When I came in, I had an awful cough and he spent the next 10 minutes going around the store looking for a cough drop. Then he wanted to know, if I needed a ride home again but I told him that I was leaving an hour earlier than he was so that wouldn't work, and plus I had to go the supermarket.

Instead of saying, Oh Okay, he said he would drive me to the supermarket if I waited an hour. That wasn't going to work either, but I said that maybe I would just go to the supermarket and come back. I mean it's right down the street, I could go get my small groceries and then meet him back at the store so he could drive me home and so I could save 6 bucks. I told him if I didn't come back before 8, then he should just leave without me. He shrugged his shoulders and said that was cool, and then I spent the next 30 minutes running to the supermarket and throwing shit into my basket so I could make it back before 8. It's the muscles, sue me. An hour later I returned to the store, out of breath, and he was pretty much set to go. I started to ask him if he could take the heaviest bag out of my hands but before I could finish the rest of my sentence he had already taken the three bags I had, and started for the door.

Jesus Christ.

Are boys that weird or is being a girl that difficult. He was incredibly nice to me on the way home (and yes, I know that he has a girlfriend and no, I did not jump his bones when he dropped me off. I swear) and it just seemed so peculiar this new change in attitude after our really rough week. Can hair really do that to a boy? Are they so driven by the sight of long locks that they go into a frenzy at the sight of it. Or it could have been the short skirt. I don't know.

It did feel really good being a girly girl for a while, and not taking myself too seriously. I have a tendency of doing a lot of that these days.