High school was not a happy time for me. I was terribly shy and always felt like I was on the outside looking in. I knew I would love college, but I also knew I had to get through high school as quickly as possible. To that end, I went to school every semester, summer, winter, spring, and fall, with no breaks in between.
It was during this time that I learned about Go-Getters, a service organization that seeks to promote school and community spirit in support of competitive interscholastic activities. Theoretically, anyone could join. I say theoretically because the only ones who got through the interview process were the popular girls. It wasn’t one of them.
The old saying, “birds of the same plumage fly together” was absolutely true during those years. He had no close friends, but he did have a few classmates, as well as three other girls who weren’t popular and didn’t fit in.
Needless to say, if you weren’t popular and didn’t fit in, you weren’t invited to parties either.
As a deep introvert, I didn’t mind not being invited to parties, but I did mind not participating in the Go-Getters because I wanted to make a difference. I did not know that its purpose was to promote sporting events; I just thought they were promoting our school and our community.
One day I called my three friends, the other girls who were just as unpopular as I was, and told them my idea.
I decided that the four of us should form our own club, a secret club, and no one would know that our total membership was four girls.
As a response to Go-Getters, a club that refused my membership, I decided that our club would be called We-Gottems. The Go-Getters had black satin jackets with Go-Getters emblazoned on the back of their jackets and the member’s name on the front and I decided that our We-Gottems would do the same for our jackets.
I remember taking one of my jackets and embroidering We-Gottems on the back and my name on the front pocket. The other girls did the same with their jackets. And we wore our jackets to school and didn’t answer questions about our club. When someone asked, we said that our membership was secret.
One day, I decided we needed to do something a little more adventurous, so I told my friends we should have a party and invite some popular Go-Getters and some popular guys and tell the guys the names of the popular girls we were going to. to be there and tell the girls the names of the popular guys who had accepted our invitation.
Surprisingly, it worked. My three friends and I were no more popular than before, but at least we were no longer on the outside looking in. We were at this party with the popular people.
When someone asked us where our other members were, we told them that they had other commitments. No one asked us the hard questions about our club; they were simply happy to be invited to a party where other popular students were invited.
They probably would have ignored me if not for the party being held at my house. We had a gramophone and I was busy winding it up and trading 78rpm vinyl records for dancing, so at least I had something to do with my time.
After seeing the success of that party, I asked my friends how they felt about having more parties, using the same strategy. They agreed with my idea and every few weeks we had another party.
We invited different Go-Getters to each party and different popular kids who hadn’t been invited to the other parties. That way no one could guess that these parties were being thrown by the same four girls and that we had no one else in our club. The girls and boys were eager to be invited to our parties because the popular students were always there.
I was always coming up with new ideas to make We-Gottems visible without revealing our secret membership. The only thing I noticed was that no one cared as long as they were considered popular enough to be included.
That was a great learning experience for me. Imagine that!! The popular students were worried that other students would think they were popular enough to be included. Who is Thunkit?
I wasn’t allowed to date until I was sixteen, my senior year, but the other guys and girls were old enough to date, so there weren’t enough students to invite to our parties anymore. The club had served our purpose, so we disbanded it and began to focus on our college entrance exams.
Unfortunately, the best lessons in life are often revealed to us many years after we have experienced them. So too, with the lessons I learned from those high school years. It took me many years to realize that I was creative enough to make lemonade out of lemons and that no matter the circumstances, I would always find a way to survive. It is a lesson that has served me well.
