High school at The Cheesecake Factory

This weekend William and I went out to dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. There were several teenagers in the lobby area, waiting for their table. All dressed up in their fancy dresses and suits, waiting, talking... after a few minutes of observing, they all began to fit into stereotypes. There was the thin, impatient girl who pulled her boyfriend's attention away any time he started to converse with his other friends. There was the jock who was kind of handsy with his date. There was one girl, who, along with her date, seemed like a nice person caught between being popular and being friendly. Most of the time, these 6 were standing in a circle talking. On the outside of the circle were 2 girls who obviously didn't fit the mold that the first 6 had conformed to. Neither were gussied up to the hilt. They were the ones that got the pity invite, only to be snubbed while there. The one nice girl and her date seemed genuinely torn for awhile, trying to include them in the conversation, but eventually almost all of the teens that were in couples sat on the available benches. The outsider girls were left standing. Not one of those guys offered their seat to those girls. I was whispering my observations to William, and he agreed with me. One of the outsider girls had a tattoo in Latin on her foot, which caught William's attention. I bet she is smart, witty, and interested in much more than wearing sparkly dresses and deserves better company than the people she was with. I don't know how those girls felt about being the 7th and 8th wheel in that group, but I know how I felt when that was me, all throughout high school. It's miserable. People tell you you are better than them, but you don't believe it at the time. You can put on a front and pretend you don't care, but you do. Everyone wants to be liked and accepted. What I wanted to tell the 6, and then the 2, is that this is all going to change when they become adults. The social game still exists in college, to some extent, but once you grow up... oh how those tables turn. You realize that you really wouldn't have wanted to be friends with those people. You realize your identity hinges on much more than what you wear, if you are in the "in" crowd, if you have a date to homecoming... but it takes time to realize that. It's easier to let go of those days, because you weren't caught up in it in the first place. It stinks, and you're glad to leave it behind. Those 6 are going to have to learn harder lessons because they've had it easy. As we walked away when our buzzer went off, my final thought was "Thank God those days are over!" I wouldn't go back for a million dollars, but I wouldn't trade what I learned for anything.