Popular Girls

I was not one. I had my circle of friends and a few friends from other groups (you know who you are), but I was not "popular" in the er... popular sense. I was a Nerd Without a Cause - too string-based to be a Band Geek, too tied up with music to be a Drama Geek, glasses as thick as my hand, braces on my teeth, and girls just were not computer geeks in the early 1980s. In fact, at my 20-year high school reunion, I was shocked at the number of people who not only recognized me (no glasses now) and remembered me fondly. Who knew?

My eight-year-old daughter, Abby, is a Popular Girl. She's popular with the boys because she likes "some boy things and some girl things", according to her nine-year-old friend Greg (he means that she likes superheroes but is squicked by bugs, mainly). She's popular with the girls because she's basically a nice person, unstinting with compliments to her peers and all-around kind. I'm not under any illusions that she's perfect; I try not to be That Parent. And she certainly has her bratty, whiny and just plain strange moments (did you know she's half-vampire? But only on the left side of her body). But I do feel a certain amount of pride along with the annoyance due to knocks on our door up until (and sometimes past) the kids' bedtime, just because a neighbor child would like Abby to come out and play.

She's a Popular Girl, although she doesn't seem to grok that she is. I wonder if her classmates will remember her in 2041.