I Was Wrong

           Ever since I started school happy people have annoyed me, now I don’t mean people who can get really happy about something, I mean people who are constantly happy. They type of people who never have a frown on their face and never get angry or sad about anything. People who are so chalked full of spirit that their faces turn purple! I never really knew why, maybe because I always had an atitude problem, maybe because I knew, even at a young age, that the world isn’t perfect with candy rainbows. Whatever the reason I could never stand to be around people who were so full of happiness and spirit that their world floated out of their mouths on cotton candy clouds. I thought that a girl in my grade, Vanessa Cousins was that type of person. I thought that she was also a stuck up and fake daddy’s girl who was spoiled by her parents constantly. I would learn, eleven years later, that outside appearances can be deceiving.
            If Vanessa’s mom was the stereotypical PTA, soccer/pageant mom, then Vanessa was the equally stereotypical sport and beauty oriented daughter. The perfect blend of sugar and spice and everything nice if you will. She played field hockey in middle and high school, participated in plays as soon as she could, and took every available dance class. She was constantly voted president of my class and was involved in everything student council and key club. She was the popular girl that you saw in cheesy movies, all the girls were her friends, well almost all of them, and all the boys wanted to be her boyfriend, and again, almost all. Me and my friends hated her for so many years. We were the anti-social ones who went to school funtions to make fun of all the people who were so into it. We expected a lot from the kids in our class who in student council, but we never offered to help ourselves. My friends never knew it, but there was another reason why I hated Vanessa, besides her ultra happy appearance. Celeste, a girl in my class, and I had been friends since 1st grade, but in 5th grade she began to hang out with all the popular girls and started ditching me all the time. Vanessa became her new best friend, and I became a loser standing in the background. As we grew up I continued to hate Vanessa, as well as Celeste, and all their friends. My friends and I made fun of them for participating in so many school events, like sports and plays and homecoming. But deep down inside I knew the only reason I hated them, was because I was jealous that they were so popular.
               When Spring Fling of Junior year rolled around my friends and I decided that we wanted to get involved. There was a lip synch contest on Friday, so Vanessa called a meeting for any junior who wanted to participate. My friends and I put on happy faces and worked with Vanessa that afternoon to choose a song and what we wanted to do. We decided that we would sing “We Go Together” from Grease, and that Vanesa’s mom would come in after work to teach us a dance to go along with it. We met every day after school for about and hour and a half and spent the whole time practicing and choreographing the song. As the week went on I got to know Vanessa, the real Vanessa. I learned that she wasn’t a shallow and popular girl, in fact a lot of people in school didn’t like her because of her leadership qualities, one of them being Caleste, my former best friend. I learned that her parents were divorced and that her father rarely visited her. Dancing was her favorite activity, and she worked so hard at school events because she wanted our class to have nice events and memories. She took on a lot of things because she wanted to make a name for herself. We had a lot in common, not so much facts, like favorite colors and activities, but emotions, we could relate to what the other was feeling, We were both very different from what other people thought of us. I regretted all the years that I hated and envied her, I felt guilt and remorse for all the years that we could have been good friends. We started talking more and more and became very close friends in a short amount of time. Now I can’t think of why I ever disliked her, she’s helped me through so much this year and we’ve had some of the most fun times that I’ve ever had. I love her deeply and am going to miss her terribly when we both leave for college next year, but I’m happy that we’ve become best friends. I know that no matter what happen in the years to come we’ll always be close and we’ll always be there for each other.