Most Unique

In my senior year of high school, we had to vote for yearbook awards. You know the ones: Most School Spirit, Class Clown, Best Eyes. I wasn’t super popular, so I wasn’t expecting to get showered with votes, but I knew I had a shot at Best Dressed.

I had been a fashion fiend since I could pick out my own clothes, putting together crazy outfits to wear even on the most mundane days. Holidays? You can bet your ass I was showing up to school in some themed getup, all pink for Valentine’s Day or head to toe candy cane stripes for the last day of school before Christmas break. I was the girl wearing heels to school for no specific occasion other than it was a Tuesday. And I lived in a ski town, so this would be a Tuesday with 3 fresh inches of snow.

At school, I was chatting with some of my friends about the awards, if they knew who they were voting for, etc. Someone asked me,

“Is there one that you want to win?” I shrugged and lightly suggested that the Best Dressed one might be nice. One of my friends made an awkward face.

“Sarah’s trying to win that one. She’s telling people to vote for her.”

Shit. I hadn’t anticipated someone making a campaign out of this thing. I asked Sarah about it later:

“So you’re going for Best Dressed for the yearbook thing?”

She looked at me with her puppy dog eyes, knowing full well my collection of kooky pattered tights was superior to hers.

“Yeah, I just really want it! But I was gonna vote for you for Most Unique, that’s so perfect for you!”

“……”

Aight. Unique is a tough word. Because, yes, it does mean you’re kooky and interesting, and not similar to everyone else. But this is also high school, an organization that is basically run on conformity. And unique can be a positive thing, but it can also mean you stick out like a sore thumb, are weird, and are essentially the one left over puzzle piece of the bunch.

I was a bit odd and unusual, to be fair. I had been raised vegetarian, atheist, and without cable television, a trifecta which got me into several heated debates with classmates, especially in my younger years. It was never me who started them either.

A kid came up to me in fourth grade, to confront me about my disgraceful way of living after finding out I was a vegetarian. He lumbered up on the playground, shaggy brown hair seated like a mop upon his head, eyes full of contempt and self righteousness. His mom was the kind of woman who would most likely sue me over slander if I were to include his name, so let’s just call him G-Man.

“If you don’t eat meat, you won’t go to heaven.”

First of all, I was pretty sure that this prepubescent lump didn’t hold heaven’s gate keys, so this statement was a bit confusing.

“Huh?”

“You can’t be a vegetarian, because God gave you teeth to eat meat with, so if you don’t eat meat, you’re going to hell.”

“I don’t believe in heaven or hell.”

“…. what?”

“I don’t believe in God.”

I watched as G-Man’s carefully crafted argument crumbled before his eyes. I don’t think he anticipated that response. He sputtered a bit, before changing tactics.

“Then you can’t celebrate Christmas!”

“Well, I do.”

“But you can’t! Christmas is about God so you can’t celebrate Christmas!”

“I put up a Christmas tree, I do presents, I still celebrate Christmas.”

“But you can’t!”

At this point there really wasn’t any reason for me to keep fighting, G-Man seemed beyond perplexed, and I had nothing to earn here, seeing little value in the respect of someone who probably hadn’t even read Harry Potter. So I walked away.

I suppose “Unique” is a few steps above the teeth-misusing, Christmas fugitive that G-Man had me out to be. So high school me counted my blessings when the awards came out, and I made the cut.

The girl and boy winners in each category had to come in and have our pictures taken for the yearbook. Sarah proudly posed as the Best Dressed girl in the 2012 senior class, wearing a white and red floral dress, a hip denim jacket, and a giant pair of sunglasses. She could have been an extra in High School Musical. I rode up wearing a pair of black patent leather oxford heels, a rainbow patterned bandage skirt, a white tee shirt with a funky Polaroid picture on it (this is pre-Taylor Swift’s Polaroid obsession, I’m very innovative), and a fascinator. Yep, a fucking fascinator. With a little mesh veil that came over my eyes. I won the award alongside a boy who I had known since elementary school. I should add, he never once gave me shit about being vegetarian. Though I guess he has a peanut allergy, so I’m sure he was sympathetic to dietary restrictions. And he brought a light saber to the photo shoot. Yeah, fuck it, I’ll take Most Unique any day.