She’d ripped away the illusion that I was an innocent victim of fate, that some people were popular and others weren’t

W

hen my mother was expecting me, she’d been prescribed a drug not indicated for pregnancy. It caused all my baby teeth to grow in a grayish brown. From a very young age, before children are usually subject to social pressure, I was teased and excluded.

Throughout elementary school, even as my baby teeth fell out and were replaced by normal white teeth, I couldn’t really fit in. I assumed that even though I now looked like every other girl when I opened my mouth, the kids had already labeled me an outcast and there was nothing I could do to escape it.

My mother, herself socially awkward, had grown up without friends and tried to teach me I had value in Hashem’s EEyes and shouldn’t care what anyone else thought. As hard as I tried not to be bothered — and to put on a show that I couldn’t care less what anyone thought of me — I desperately wanted to be accepted.

By eighth grade, I had a few girls who occasionally included me, and I could join a conversation without being rebuffed, but for the most part I usually found myself outside the social circle. That made me and Michal, one of the wealthiest and most popular girls in our class, a most unlikely pair. But every other girl in our class had a ride home immediately after school, while we were the only two girls who waited around for our parents to finish work.

After the final bell rang, for the next 45 minutes, it was just the two of us sitting on opposite ledges outside the double doors at the back of the school. At first, I’d read, do homework, or pretend to be busy with anything, rather than dare talk to Michal. But it was inevitable, with only the two of us there day after day, that we’d eventually strike up a conversation of sorts.

I don’t think we had any soul-beaarring discussions, but we did become comfortable and would pass the time talking about how unfair the math test was, and how much better the Chanukah chagigah would be if we could get the school to agree to live music.

Our little friendship never carried over into the remainder of the school day. I have no recollection of wanting it to, or feeling bad that it didn’t. We were from very different worlds, and not just because she was wealthy and my family could barely make ends meet. I was from a totally Orthodox family, while hers was traditional. She was head of dance and liked math. I had two left feet and loved literature. We had only enough common ground to pass the time until our rides came — and that was fine for both of us.