Being Different

At Atlee High School, drinking seemed to be a social norm. Everybody seemed to drink, with the exception of the group of people I hung around. Every Monday, like clockwork, everybody would be talking about the great party that they went to and how wasted they got. The problem came one day when somebody asked me what I did over the weekend. When I did not reply, they asked if I went to any party and if I got wasted. When I said that I did not, that I did not drink at all. They looked at me like I had ten heads.

During high school, I did get picked on a lot because I did not drink, but worst of all people tried to belittle me because I did not drink. They tried to make me feel bad about myself and less of a person because I did not drink. Even though it hurt to get picked on because I didn't drink, I did not pay much attention to it. I felt that if people were going to ridicule me for not drinking then they didn't deserve me giving them the time of day by getting angry. When people would pick on me, I would just turn to my friends because the ones that really mattered to me would not pick on me.

I completely understood why I got picked on. I didn't do something that most high schoolers thought everybody did. I was the different one. I did something that society didn't do. The "society" to which I am refering was the majority of the student population and I was made fun of because I didn't follow their "rules." It was just like any person being ostricized by the "in" crowd because they weren't pretty enough, skinny enough, rich enough, etc. It was something really petty in the real scheme of things. Hence, it really did not bother me.