Cupcakes and Jealousy

By all traditional accounts, I was not popular in high school. I was really into band, and most of the people I hung out with were part of the band crowd, too. Theoretically, the band kids should have been my best friends. That wasn’t always the case. There was an incident on my seventeenth birthday that I have honestly given a lot of thought since it happened. It’s probably just because I’m the type of person who searches for meaning in everything, but I really do think there’s something to learn in this.

I had a friend who was seemingly every high school stereotype that I was not. To use simply the stereotypes to make my point, she was a cheerleader and popular, while I was a self-proclaimed band nerd. Let’s be real–those aren’t the types of high school students everyone expects to be friends. Not only that, but she was a year ahead of me in school, adding more distance between us. Despite all of this, I truly considered this girl my friend.

On my birthday, this friend had made me cupcakes and brought them to school for me. We didn’t even have a class together, but she left them with a teacher we both had at different times. It wasn’t about the cupcakes, but I was so excited and felt so loved by this friend who by all stereotypical expectations wouldn’t have cared one bit about my birthday. I told literally anyone who would listen for the rest of the day, “She made me cupcakes!”

My last class of the day was band. Because of the time of year of my birthday, we were preparing for graduation. As a junior marshal that year, I didn’t have to play at graduation, and the seniors didn’t play most of it, so I and several of the senior girls were sitting in another room while the rest of the class was in rehearsal.

To be honest, I don’t think any of these girls except one or two even acknowledged my birthday was that day. But they were supposed to be my friends, right? They were band kids just like me. We had things in common. But that’s not even the point of this story. No, the point was the response when I told them about my cupcakes.

“I don’t like her. She’s a bitch.”

Really?

I thought, “What the heck has she ever done to you?”

I couldn’t even tell you who said it, but it didn’t really matter because there were murmurs of agreement around the room. This was what these girls thought was the right thing to say in response to who had cared so much about me that she made me cupcakes. Most of them never even wished me a happy birthday.

I’m non-confrontational, so my only regret is that I didn’t challenge them more. I simply said, “Well, I do. She made me cupcakes,” as though that settled it, and then forced the conversation to another topic.

The point of this story isn’t to tear into these senior band girls. I don’t talk to any of them anymore. Some of them were truly people I once considered friends, but I can’t tell you much about any of them now. Their jealousy was evident in more than this instance, and I had no interest in continuing such toxic friendships.

My friend who had made the cupcakes, however, continued to be important to me. Not only that, but she is someone I truly admire to this day. She is kind and intelligent, and I know that she will do amazing, life-changing things in this world. I am beyond grateful that she and I both were able to see beyond the stereotypical outward appearances and expectations of high school.

Friends are the people who support you and stand by your side always, not the people who others assume should be your friends. I strive to be the type of friend who makes cupcakes, not the one who jealously declares the cupcake friend a bitch. I think that’s something we should all want in life.