How I Became Popular...or Not

“Popular!

You're gonna be popular!

I'll teach you the proper ploys

When you talk to boys

Little ways to flirt and flounce (Ooh!)

I'll show you what shoes to wear

How to fix your hair

Everything that really counts

To be popular

I'll help you be popular!

You'll hang with the right cohorts

You'll be good at sports

Know the slang you've got to know

So let's start

'Cause you've got an awfully long way to go”

-From the musical Wicked

If you are familiar with the Broadway musical Wicked, you have heard this song. It is sung by the pretty, popular character Galinda at the point of the play where she decides to give the rather unfortunate looking Elphaba a makeover. This is my favorite part of the play, not only because the song is cute and funny, but also because I can totally relate…

“I’m going to give you popular lessons,” my sister (the Galinda in this story) announced one day to my nine-year old self. A year and a half my senior, she had graciously decided to make me, the Elphaba charity-case, her newest project.

Step one to becoming popular: handwriting lessons. (Who knew handwriting had a direct correlation with popularity? Why, my sister, of course!)

“Your writing isn’t bubbly enough,” Galinda, er … Alina said. She handed me a sheet of notebook paper with the ABC’s written neatly across the top in her perfect handwriting. “Try to make it look like more like mine.”

After I had painstakingly copied her letters, we moved on to phone etiquette.

“How many phone numbers do you know?” she demanded, a question that confused me. I started rattling off our own phone number but was quickly stopped. “Not our phone number, how many other people’s numbers do you know?”

“Oh!” I said, “Well I know Ginger’s and Jessica’s…”

“Tell you what, Galina interrupted. “Let’s have a contest to see who knows the most phone numbers. I’ll go first.”

And with that we started spouting off the phone numbers we had memorized. Since she obviously had more friends than I did, I’ll let you guess who won.

I’m a little fuzzy on what else my popular lessons entailed, or if they even went any further past that first day. Who knows, maybe after the phone number contest I was given up as a hopeless case. Meanwhile I taught my little brother to say “thank you” if anyone ever called him weird.

“Consider it a compliment,” I said. “It’s cool to be weird!”

No wonder my sister was worried.