This week, we're celebrating the release of my Kirsten Hubbard's , Like Mandarin!
(have you entered YA Highway's amazing Like Mandarin giveaway?)
The prompt:
(have you entered YA Highway's amazing Like Mandarin giveaway?)
The prompt:
In Like Mandarin, 14-year-old Grace Carpenter would give anything to be like 17-year-old Mandarin Ramey -- the bold, carefree wild girl of their small Wyoming town. Who did you want to be like growing up?I'm not sure there was one specific person I wanted to be like. More often, I had the image of who I wanted to be (cool, laid back, effortless) in comparison to who I actually was (hyper, spastic, and nerdy).
There were definitely people I watched exude those qualities that I tried so hard to mirror sometimes (and failed horribly). But that was the beautiful thing about being a teenager: looking back we were all awkward in some way. All of us wishing to be someone else at one time or another. The sad thing is we rarely realize that until we became adults lol.
6 comments:
I'm pretty sure everyone wishes they were cool, laid back, and effortless because I'm sure that the ones that were, really weren't.
When I thought about this question, the word that kept coming back to me was "effortless." Some people just SEEMED like they were amazing without working at it, at all. Of course now we know they WERE, and everyone is just as insecure as everyone else. But man, it didn't seem like it then!
I definitely had a Kirsten in my head I was always trying to be, but never quite made it. Still do I think!
I feel you. My mom even named me for a girl she knew who was calm and collected all the time. So much for that strategy...
I also feel the need to tell you my word verification is "hoses." Because I'm a spaz.
Yup - I totally had that image in my head too. You're right that everyone was awkward in some way...I bet if we could go back and watch some of the interactions between our peers who appeared so cool and confident, it would look a lot different!
Oh! I had images in my head of who I wanted to be as well when I was a teenager. I so badly wanted to be beautiful and bohemian. And troubled, but in a mysterious, enigmatic kind of way. Rather than a hideously awkward way.
I think awkwardness is always so much easier to notice when it's yours, you know? Everyone else was awkward as well, but I was always so busy worrying about my own awkwardness that I never really noticed. I bet a lot of people go through their school years like that.
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