when sitting alone in public goes wrong.

Steve has an internship with the football team at the highschool we both graduated from. That's where we've been spending the last couple of Friday nights. It gives me awkward feelings to be at my highschool so often. The stands consist of: Parents, grandparents, babies, students and then me. I feel like the only 21 year old.

Everything seems foreign. And the students... oh dear, the students. It's entertaining, yet painful, to observe the students in the most awkward time of their lives. Behind all the glitter make-up, braces, face paint, grease, acne, etc, they are all the same person claiming to be unique.... making them even more the same.

Tonight, I was sitting alone in the full of gossip, teenage infested stands while Steve was on the field with the team. I don't have any issues with being alone in public. I have issues being surrounded by teenagers.

Then it happened. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a 15-16 ish boy approaching me.

Teen boy: "Hi. I saw you were sitting alone."

Me: "Yep, it's true...."

Teen boy: "Are you a Mom?" WHAT!! Thank you, thank you for sending me into a quarter life crisis, dude.

Me: "No, I used to go here. I graduated in 2007"

Teen boy: "So, I think you are really pretty. I'm not supposed to tell you, but my friends back there will all give me five bucks if you give me your number."

Me: "......."

Teen boy: "Come on." [insert innocent smile here]

Me: "Really? No.... You are under-age."

Then I looked at him and then looked at the crowd of his friends making a shadow behind him in the distance. They all had the look of, yeah right, no way. Something else I observed about the crowd was they set him up to be humiliated, he definitely was the runt of the group, but he desperately wanted to belong.  So, I took the pen and wrote down my number, but one digit off. After praising me and saying thank you a bajillion times, he scampered back to his group where I heard them all cheer and high-five him.

I feel so old.... and used.

i realized something today.

On Saturday mornings when I'm  wandering around the blog world, I visit a lot of different blogs. I like it because it gives me ideas, I come across some interesting bloggers, and it passes time.Then I realized something...

Blogging is kind of like high school with interactions on blogs and email instead of face to face. Let me  tell you why I feel this way.  

There are cliques. These are the bloggers who comment on each other's blogs and don't let others in easily . And the cool bloggers get together with other cool bloggers and take pictures with each other's dogs and babies.

Then, there are the bloggers who try to buy friends and followers with giveaways. (However, if you do giveaways AND comment on others' blogs, you aren't considered as one of these people). These are like the people who would buy their friends.

Comments are like passing each other notes in class. The cool ones will get the most.

Low and behold, as always, there is the gossip behind each other's backs, which in the blogging world is writing posts about others and not telling them it's about them.

Followers/subscribers are the members of our "crowd." When you lose one, it slightly seems like life is a little more depressing and you wonder what you did/said to make someone stop being your friend. You start think about past "conversations" you've had, if you were offensive, etc.

There are the ones like me, who don't have a clique. I have blogger friends but nothing so obviously cliquey. Just as I was in high school.