Disdain of the Masses

When I was 17 I moved into a ward with about 30 young women. Most of them were a couple years younger than me, so we weren't in the same Sunday School class. They all lived in different towns, so we didn't go to the same school. They had all been in the ward for years, so they all knew each other really well and had formed their cliques.

I was very socially inept as a teenager. I wasn't good at initiating conversation, making small talk, or stepping out of my comfort zone. In a new ward my comfort zone consisted of me and me alone. So I kept to myself. Later I got to know a couple of the guys in the ward because I had to give them a ride from seminary to school every morning and the silent car rides were getting awkward.

I never got to know the girls in that ward. They never tried to talk to me and I wasn't about to step into a group of girls I didn't know and try to get to know them. I was too shy for that kind of thing. A couple years later I found out that the girls in that ward hated me. I didn't understand it. How could you hate someone you've never talked to or even tried to talk to?

Turns out they had decided I was a stuck up snob who thought I was too good for them. This was because I had never been nice to them or tried to get to know them. Well, I figured that it's the job of the people who are there already to make the new guy feel welcome, but I guess I was mistaken. Why did they decide I was stuck up instead of shy? Why jump to such a drastic conclusion? Why, over ten years later, do some of them still harbor a grudge against me when I never even learned their names?

I was a good-looking, athletic, muscular kid. I don't say that to brag, but to lend context to the situation. I've seen it played over a number of times since I experienced it myself. The general assumption is that a person who fits that criteria must be popular and social. Which means that if they ignore you it's because they must think they're too good for you. If a person is unattractive and quiet then people assume they must be very shy. Oh, that poor shy guy, let's go make him feel at home. But since person A isn't repulsive he must be a jerk since he didn't leap into our lives and become our friends.

Yesterday I posted a dumb comment on the wall of one of those young women from my ward in the past. Not sure why we're facebook friends since we were never really friends. She got very angry, tore into me, and then wrote another of those young women and said, "Remember how Jacob Romney was an a****le when we were growing up? Well he's still an a****le. Go check my facebook page." Wow! The fact that I can get that strong of a response out of someone I haven't seen in over ten years and haven't ever spoken to is incredible.