Rejection

In ninth grade, I was possibly the most socially awkward kid in the school. My lunches involved me standing next to 3 of my friends, watching them eat because I never brought food or money. I didn’t socialize, just watched.  It may come with little surprise that I had some experience with rejection, and maybe this is because I only liked girls who were way out of my league. I wanted to ask a certain cheerleader to homecoming, and not just a normal cheerleader. She was by far the most attractive cheerleader in the school (and she will stay unnamed). I figured that if I asked her in front of a ton of people, she’d be sure to say yes. I must have been out of my mind. I wrote it on the whiteboard where warm-ups normally were. She walked into the room, turned to look at the warm-ups, and frantically (yet nonchalantly) erased it in one swipe. She was red. I was red. I couldn’t show my face anymore, I just got absolutely shut down in front of an entire class with a “surefire” plan. I look back at it and still feel embarrassed, but not because she rejected me. It’s just funny to me that I had the audacity to ask someone that I barely knew to homecoming, and expected a yes.