ao glad I have a laptop

I was watching last night's "Ugly Betty" episode just now and a part came up that just struck a major chord with me. It was a short 5 second moment ... a line that Betty Suarez said to Gio while they are chaperoning the school dance.

Gio is looking around the room telling Betty that the kids at the dance are just like the people she knows in her everyday life. He points out a boy with his arms around 2 girls "There's Daniel" he says. A mean-spirited blonde girl is picking on someone and "There's Amanda" He tells her that she was the kid who didn't have any fun in junior high and she proceeds to list all the activities she was part of, like yearbook and multi cultural club and tells him that she had plenty of fun.

That's when Gio finds "Betty" in the crowd of kids. A lone girl sitting on the bleachers writing in a notebook. He turns to Betty and says "She's probably covering the dance for the schoo newspaper" And Betty turns to him and says, "No, she's waiting for someone to ask her to dance."

It absolutely made me pause the show and pick up the laptop. Because that girl was also me.

I spent so much of my high school life behind a notebook. I kept a journal of one form or another since 1986. (Side note I just found page 1 of the very first entry I ever made into my journal. It's still hard to read. Perhaps someday I'll share it.)

My point is not the journal however. It is that I hid behind it. That everywhere I went I used my journal to cover up the fact that I really just wanted people to talk to me but I was too shy to make the first move. So I wrote instead and hoped against hope that someone would come over and "ask me to dance" and consequently give me a reason to set that notebook down and live.

I'm not saying I didn't live. But I sucked at interactions with people. I really did. I look back at it now and I'm sometimes amazed that i had friends at all. Thankfully, the friends I did make were quality and most are still friends of mine 20 years later.

I wonder sometimes tho what life would have been like if I wouldn't have been so afraid to interact with people. If I would have joined in conversations at the end of classes instead of pulling out my notebook to jot down my thoughts and hide away in. If I had been able to ask someone to dance instead of constantly waiting for someone to ask me.