Breaking Boys 2 (reprise)

The Principal's Son

"There was the boy whose dad was the principal. He only dated me when I got skinny and pretty enough to receive his friend's approval. He had dated me before, only to break up with me over the phone two days later. I took this as a sign that I wasn’t good enough. So when I got "good" enough, he was right there waiting. He was the boy who wanted to hold my hand and take me to the dance. I was the girl who didn’t want anyone to know we were together. And when I started getting more attention from boys, I wrote him a "dear john" letter in the middle of summer."



There is a photo of us, simple and plain, pasted in the middle of one of the pages in my scrapbook. It’s a sunny day and the two of us are standing next to each other, holding hands, and I try to remember if I was comfortable in that moment as I appear to be in the picture that sits before me. I remember blushing as my friends were urging me to pose for the picture, afraid that touching his hands could lead to kissing and babies and teenage motherhood. I examine the photograph more carefully and find a tell tale sign of how uncomfortable I was standing next to a boy I hardly knew, but to whom I belonged. In the photo, I am leaning ever so slightly away from him and have popped out my ankle in an attempt to distance myself as much as possible from a boy I never had feelings for. You would never know it, though, unless you knew me well, because my smile seems to hide all that uncomfortable awkwardness.

Written beside the photo is a simple sentence that documents the date our relationship started and ended- exactly one month long, no more, no less. "Four whole weeks," I think, "what kept us together for four whole weeks?" As if four weeks was an eternity.

Then, I recall the tying bond that held us together for that long- the dance. Having a boyfriend ensured that you would have a date for the dance, and guarantee that you would have someone to sit next to, someone who would bring you punch and take pictures with you. In essence, it was someone to make you feel less alone in Couple Land where all my fast friends lived with their boyfriends.

The peculiar thing is that I believed in it all. I believed in the relationship so much that I even found a song for us. Alanis Morisette’s "Head Over Feet" became my anthem for those four long weeks with him, in which I convinced myself over and over that I was head over feet for the principal’s son. This is the point of origin in which I honed the ability to convince myself, as well as others, that my feelings, however false they truly were, were strong and genuine. This is where I learned to fake it.

Of course, back then I wasn’t able to see any of this clearly, but I see now, in that photo in my scrapbook, the desperation in my eyes to join the dating droves, which the principal’s son helped me to achieve.