A little story...

{Blogger's note: This is just a little something that i wrote. The following piece of work is purely fictitious. Any resemblance of any person in this to anyone dead or alive is purely coincidental. The events that are described never really took place.}


There he was again. Surrounded by his little 'gang' of followers. Well, they couldn't be called anything else, because they did practically worship him as their God. I don't think he was ever alone. He must have even had a group to accompany him to the Boys' room! And the worst part was, it seemed as though they were having the best time of their lives, laughing their heads off, and lungs out; faces all smiles. There never seemed to be a dull moment in the group or rather, gang! To my own disgust, I was actually curious to know what went on there. It irked me that my friends were such wannabes when it came to him. In the sense that, "I wanna be in that gang" or "Don't you wanna know what they're talking about?" - they'd ask me. "Yeah! right", was my eternal sarcastic reply. But in my heart of hearts, i knew that it bugged me that I was so left out,so out-of-sync! As i had never been!
I thought it was wierd that he, who had come into our lives only two months ago was so popular, whereas I, who had been with them for practically their whole lives, was such a, well, such a "nerd". It had never bothered me that i was the nerd of the class, but now it did. But I did know why!
I've always had strong opinions on popularity. It's a very simple equation. The person who does worst in class, who is the most ill-mannered and worst behaved, and the one who always craves for most attention, is the one who gets attention. The well-behaved, doing-well-in-class types were the nerds, like me. I had always known this and never cared. Because I knew that I was not a shallow person who cared about looks or surface appearances, but one who cared about what was inside. And this little so called equation of mine never seemed to be balanced. Why was it that the worst kids, in my eyes, were the best in others'? Then I came up with a theory for this. A few students of the class did really well and a few did really badly, but the majority of the class was in the middle - average. This majority never liked to compare itself to the ones who did better because obviously they wouldn't feel very good about themselves. So they compared themselves to the ones who did badly, and derived some pleasure out of it. Then, when the ones who did badly put-down the good ones, the average ones tended to join in, to get solace for themselves. It was a wierd theory based on wierd interpretations. In my mind was a stereotype - anybody who was popular was dumb. Period. All of this was shattered because of him.
I never really interacted with him, being in a different section. And I was quite sure that he wasn't aware of my existence, and that suited me just fine. He must have been really stupid because he was so popular. I never really wanted to find out, but i automatically grouped him into the "plastic, dumb popular" group in my mind. Then came the fateful day of the quiz. That horrible quiz that still comes to me in my nightmares. It was one where about 14 students from my school took part, me being one of them. We were to be paired up into 7 teams of two for the written preliminaries. To my utmost horror and greatest disgust, I was partnered with him. HIM, of all people! The assigning of partners had been our student co-ordinator's job, who was 3 years senior to me. In my rage, I walked up to her and screamed in her face, "How could you pair me with him? HE IS DUMB. I'm going to lose with him as a partner. I cant believe it. I refuse to take part..." and so on for about five whole minutes. All the while, when I was shouting at the top of my lungs, she was sedately standing and staring into my eyes, unfazed, unaffected. At the end of my loud rant, she didnt say a word. He was standing two steps behind her. He stepped up in front of me and said, "If you want to change partners, go ahead, I don't mind being with anyone." The first thought that came into my head was, "He just doesn't want to be with the class nerd so he used my anger as a clever cover to make himself look gracious. Ugh! I cant stand him".
The quiz in itself was a blur. I was paired with my best friend and we didn't get through to the final on-stage round. We decided to stay back and watch the finals. To my astonishment, his team made it through the prelims. I attributed their success to his partner, who was known for his quizzing talents. As I watched the progress of the quiz, my shock grew to amazement and finally to utter disbelief as he was answering most of the questions. The mind-numbing part came during the final round, a solo rapid-fire. He got up and confidently, without his voice quavering even once, answered all seven questions correctly and won the quiz for our school by a whooping 65 points. Stunned, i rose from the audience ready to leave. That was when our student co-ordinator said. "He is a national-level quizzer, a top ranker in school and a really nice person. If you had only given him a chance, you would have known that, and I wouldn't be telling you this here today, but congratulating you on your success in the quiz."
Thats when i realized that I'd had it all wrong, people can't be grouped, because they're just too diverse. Each person is different from the other. Prejudice and misconceptions are all that one has from classifying the way i had. I sure learnt my lesson. Today, we're good friends and we've even laughed about this whole incident, but it doesn't stop me from regretting, from saying "What if..."