don't drink, don't smoke, what do you do?

I am currently twenty years, ten months, and twelve days old. During this period of time, I have been what could possibly be considered as popular once.

I was eight years old, in third grade. I had taken to making little "notebooks" for my stuffed animals by cutting up pieces of notebook paper and stapling construction paper on each end for the covers. I'd draw something on the front or put stickers on them and call it a day. For some reason, this caught on with my classmates, and soon I had this red-haired boy I had a crush on asked me to make him a mini-notebook with a guitar drawing on the cover.

Somehow, this became a trend. First all the kids in my grade seemed to want me to make one, then the second graders wanted them and some of the fourth graders too. I began charging--a quarter for a plain one, fifty cents for a decorated one. During recess I'd take sheets of construction paper, scissors, and markers with me, so I could work on everything. Katie, who was my best friend at the time, and Stephanie (who would become my "second best-friend" the next year) ended up somehow helping me with this project, which lead to trouble. One day one of the teachers told me to stop making the notebooks, because apparently some of the kids I'd made them for didn't pay me, and Katie and Stephanie had been going up to them at recess and threatening them. What two eight year old girls who probably both weighed eighty-five pounds each were going to do to anyone is beyond me. But I stopped, and so ended my brief foray into anything resembling popularity.

( The essence of cool, or: I ramble. )

I don't want to be the nice girl anymore. I wish that my coworkers were actually my friends.