Superpower #14: Popularity

We attended 4 graduation parties last Saturday. 4! In one day! Both Grace and Sam’s graduation experience was pretty overshadowed by Covid—Grace especially as a member of the class of 2020. But I don’t think we attended 4 total for either one of them across the entire graduation party season. We are getting to a point of party fatigue with you. There are just so many invitations and so many parties we feel like we need to go to.  The fourth and final party on Saturday happened to be hosted by my first cousin. You’ve been friends with her daughter, Olivia, for your whole life, and by the time we arrived, the party was almost over. Only family remained, which was fine because they were mostly our family, too. We collapsed, exhausted, onto the folding chairs and explained our late arrival. “Four parties!” someone exclaimed. “You guys are popular!”

“It’s not us,” I quipped. Dad and I are reasonably well liked, I suppose, but we are fully riding on your coattails through this season, buoyed everywhere by your 14^th superpower: popularity.

“Popular” has always been a bit of a fraught word in high school. Being popular often means belonging to a particular group of individuals who are generally more attractive, more talented (in your school the talent usually manifests as athletic ability), and often wealthier individuals who aren’t necessarily well liked but are generally acknowledged as the best by the elusive, but reliably consistent mechanisms of teenage sorting. They are the homecoming queens and captains of the football team. They are beautiful, fashionable, unreasonably gifted, and often not very nice. You are many of these things (beautiful, athletic) but not others (unkind, elitist). You are not popular in the sense that you hang out with all the right people; you are popular in the actual definition of the word—universally well liked. You have friends in all friend groups; you are cheerful, gregarious, welcoming, and kind. By the more traditional definition (based on friend group) I would say you and your friends are “popular adjacent”: friendly, but not close to the girls who reign at the top of the queen bee hierarchy.  This has always been true for you.

Many years ago, when you were in elementary school, the mom of one of your classmates told me her daughter wished she could be more like you. “Claire is just friends with everybody,” she said. From my seat in the bleachers of your life, this appears to be very true. You are the classic example of someone for whom a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet.

One of our favorite stories about you happened when you were small, probably around age 4 or 5. We had taken a trip to visit Lake Okoboji and rented a house with a swimming dock right outside. You and your siblings were running around the yard waiting for your dad and I to finish cleaning up our lunch so you could go play in the water. You came running upstairs (our condo was on the upper level) and burst through the door. “Mom, can I go for a boat ride?” you asked somewhat breathlessly.

“Oh, honey,” I responded. “We don’t have a boat.”

“That’s ok,” you replied cheerfully. “My new best friend does.”

“You have a new best friend?” I asked incredulously.

“Yeah!” you crowed enthusiastically, racing back out the door.

I followed you down to the dock where, sure enough, a little girl about your age was waiting in a boat with her parents for you to get permission to climb aboard. We approached the couple a bit hesitantly, not quite as adept at making best friends as you and started the process of asking questions and getting to know them. It turned out they were related to people we knew back home, and had, indeed, invited you to take a ride on the lake with them. “We’ll just go out for a little bit,” the dad assured us. “And we have extra life jackets. The other kids are welcome, too,” the dad said, gesturing to your eager siblings lined up beside you on the dock.

“See, Mom,” you said excitedly. “She’s my new best friend! Can I go for a boat ride?” Your dad and I exchanged a glance, then a laugh, then agreed.

“I guess so,” I said, helping you, and then your older sister and brother climb aboard. “Are you sure this is ok?” I asked the parents.

“No problem!” the mom assured me, beaming down at your happy little face.

You collect best friends everywhere you go. Long before I started writing this blog, I used to tell you this was your main superpower (I actually called it your superpower back then; I’m not just saying it because it fits so tidily into the theme of this blog). In later years, as adolescent uncertainty raised its unpleasant head in your generally joyful and confident heart, I would remind you of this. “What is your superpower?” I’d ask.

“Making friends,” you would repeat, and then you would run off and do it. You never lingered long when it came to going out to meet new people.

People respond to your spirit and your sense of fun. Boys and girls alike are drawn to you, and you pull them all in with a laugh and open arms. This past fall, you were elected to the homecoming court for your school. It wouldn’t have surprised me a bit if you had been voted queen. You weren’t, but just being on the court is quite an honor.

When they paired you up for the skit, you were assigned to a very popular boy who is quite the football star and with whom I wasn’t sure you had much of a relationship. I knew he had been dating a volleyball teammate of yours who was also very “popular”, and with whom you had had some challenges in the past. (I use the term “popular” to describe these two individuals in the “queen bee” sense of the word and not in the pure, “friend-to-all” sense that I use to define you).  I was somewhat intimidated on your behalf. As always, I tried not to let my own insecurities (which you blessedly don't really seem to share) interfere with your enjoyment of the event. As you prepared for the pep rally, in which you were required to act out a skit or dance with your assigned partner, I quickly remembered that you and this young man had met in kindergarten and had a long history of, if not friendship, then friendly acquaintanceship. You, being your cheerful and outgoing self, had no concerns about working with him.

Your skit was excellent and showcased the abundant athleticism and charm that you both possess. He may be more traditionally "popular" than you, and, though I don't pretend to understand all the intricacies of high school social structure, it seems to me that you are every bit as loved and admired as him, or anyone else in your class. I love looking at these pictures of you, radiant and confident, enjoying these moments even in the brightest of spotlights. More, take a look at the faces of the people in the background. Your joy and charisma are contagious. Every face is smiling in genuine enjoyment.

This is the magic of your 14th superpower. Maya Angelou once famously said, "People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel."  If you can make people feel as though they are wanted, appreciated, and enjoyed, then this is the measure of your true popularity, and a true superpower indeed. 

I haven't quoted Spiderman in very many posts since the very beginning, but it seems especially appropriate now. Popularity is certainly a superpower worthy of some caution. Remember that with great popularity comes great responsibility. You will need to be the one to reach out a hand to those that are being ignored or left out. You have the confidence and the social status to widen the circle when needed, to notice and include the quieter, more awkward kids (and eventually adults) that linger on the edges of things. Loneliness is a real threat in this disconnected, isolating new world of social media and exclusive tribes that we now live in. I hope you will always use your popularity for the good of all. Knowing you, watching you over the years, I have no doubt this will continue to be the case. I can't imagine a future in which you are not one of the most popular people in any room you enter. Use this 14th superpower to make the world a better, more welcoming place.