So, when I was in 6th grade, my family learned that my dad's job at IBM was transferred out to their site in San Jose, California. We moved out there and I started a new school for 7th grade (which was sort of traumatic in a "that which doesn't kill you..." kind of way). I was not immediately popular, mostly because I was pasty, freckled, had a crazy Minnesotan accent, and wasn't allowed to wear makeup yet. Meanwhile, the other girls were sort of cool and mature. They'd been wearing makeup for years. Some of them had even been in "serious" relationships. I was way out of my league, to say the least.
Anyway, there were some particularly mean girls I won't name, just in case some day they read this blog and feel guilty...or justified, I guess. I had a few friends, and things definitely got better when I realized that it makes sense to pay a little attention to how I look. Things definitely improved when I started paying attention to trends. One of the most important trends at this school was the accumulation of Sanrio school supplies. Sanrio is the company that makes Hello Kitty things. Hello Kitty and all her chubby little animal friends were extremely popular at my new school in California. The good thing was that I genuinely liked these characters and thought they were cool, so it wasn't exactly selling out. The bad thing is that I was 13, had no money, and had very little idea where to obtain said Sanrio items.
So, fast forward a little bit, and I've got a semi-regular baby-sitting job down the street from my house, and therefore, more money to spend on Sanrio school supplies. My family lived in a really great place in California, just about halfway between the Bay Area and the Monterrey/Carmel/Santa Cruz area. One of the best parts of the whole thing is that people wanted to come visit us, which meant that we basically were forced to explore a lot in order to come up with fun things to do with our guests. One of my favorite things to do was to go to Chinatown in San Francisco. It was this busy, exciting part of a beautiful city, full of little shops and lots of restaurants. There were grocery stores selling whole, sometimes live animals. One time, an eel meant to be sold for food flopped out of a Styrofoam box onto the sidewalk in front of me, which I thought was the coolest thing in the world.
Anyway, one of these shops was a massive, brightly-colored Sanrio store. It was full of school supplies, clothing, makeup, and stuffed animals all bearing the likeness of Hello Kitty and all her anthropomorphic animal friends. I was in adolescent girl heaven. I stocked up on this stuff like I was preparing for some kind of tween girl survival camping trip--I got a pencil case with Keropi the frog, some notebooks, some folders, and some pens. When I lugged this up to the register, I noticed a little display selling some chunky chapsticks, all decorated with the cute characters and Chinese writing. Well, I needed an authentic, straight-from-China Hello Kitty chapstick. There was no question in my teen-girl mind. I bought one.
The first time I used it, I thought it was a little strange. It was vaguely mint-flavored and didn't feel moisturizing, like other chapsticks. I thought to my self, 'Well, this is just the way chapstick is in China.' I literally thought those words. The other girls in my class loved my new Sanrio supplies and oohed and aahhhed appropriately. Finally, I felt like I fit in just a little.
I was using my Hello Kitty chapstick one day, and one of the girls asked to see it. She smelled it, frowned, and said, "This smells weird. Can I use it?" This was at a time that I was more interested in keeping friends than cleanliness, so I agreed. She put some on. "This is weird!" she said. Another girl also tried it. "This isn't chapstick!" she said, laughing hysterically. "It's GLUE!" My cheeks almost burned off from the embarrassment. Within moments, the entire class I'd been working so hard to win over knew that this pale, Norwegian-sounding Minnesotan had been routinely slicking on glue stick instead of chapstick. Eventually, everyone got over it. And by eventually, I mean by the time we all moved on to different high schools.
I wish I could say that I'd learned something profound by going through this experience. Maybe I have. Maybe it turned me into someone who is more friendly to people in tough circumstances, or makes me go out of my way to be welcoming to newcomers in any situation. But the most important lessons I can identify all these years later are A.) Don't buy a beauty product unless you can read the language on its packaging and B.) Don't share your chapstick. If it does happen to actually be a glue stick, you'll be really, really embarrassed.
xo
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