Trying to fit in..

It was the year 93-94. I was in my Tenth Standard. Our school used to take kids on an excursion once a year. Most of them were one-day trips which were more like a picnic than a tour in itself. The day trips cost around Rs.30-Rs.35. It might look like a meager amount now but back then that was expensive for my family. Every year I begged my mom and she would say we will send you next year. Year after year, I kept waiting for the next one to arrive. Finally, I was in my 10th grade and that was the last year of school. That year the school was taking us to Hyderabad for a couple of days and the cost was Rs.100. I was quite keen on going but very apprehensive in asking mom as the cost was triple the usual price. However, I let my intentions and she agreed to send me that year.

The trip was nothing fancy. No first class train or hi-tech buses. Our school had around five school buses and all the students were loaded into a bus with 2-3 teachers to accompany. The bus would start around 10.00 pm at one central point and drop us back at the same place a couple of days later. So, why am I telling all this? Ah!! Parents were dropping their kids off on two wheelers mostly and the affluent in cars which were a few in number in those days. 

Coming to me, mom was single then. Mom couldn't come to drop me because she had to close her tailoring shop and had to go home late. I think she didn't come as it would be hard to find a rickshaw back home at that hour. She arranged a guy who worked with her to drop me at the location. So, how was he to drop me there? On his bicycle.  And I so didn't want this to happen but I didn't have any option either.

I didn't want my friends to see him nor wanted him to come anywhere near the bus.

I asked him to stop at quite a distance and kept saying, " Anna, I can go. you please leave.. you please leave". We know how responsible this brotherly clan is! Though I insisted I could take care of myself, he deemed that it was his responsibility to not leave me alone and made sure I was with my school people. For some reason, I could never forget that incident. I believe mom gave me an earful later. She must have.

I spent a lot of my childhood not fitting in, in a lot of different ways. 
                                                                                                   ~Wil Wheaton

As a teen, we are not comfortable with things in general at many levels. I believe it is because we want to fit in. Fit in comfortably in the friends' circles, in the society. It feels awkward to be the odd man out. I was already an odd man out for various reasons. For being loud, for not being pretty, for wearing glasses, for being a Tomboy, for being bold, for standing up for myself. For my father coming and meeting us at school which was odd; for fathers came and saw kids at school only for PTI meetings. I didn't fit in for many reasons I cannot fathom.

What reminds me of this trivial incident after 23 years? My son. Another teen in the making. He is embarrassed if I am standing in the queue to drop him off at the movie theater. The other day he said, "Amma no offense but can you stop babying me?"

Perplexed, I asked: "Babying you? Seriously?" He is embarrassed if I play devotional songs while dropping him off at school. He is embarrassed for everything under the sun. Why? Because he is trying to fit in. No matter which year of the century it is, teens are the same. The circumstances could be different, but the Trying To Fit In is the same. Not just teens, don't we all try to fit in in every phase of life?

Fitting in is boring. But it takes you nearly your whole life to work that out.  
                                                                                                                           ~ Clare Balding

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Quotes: BrainQuotes