When I was a sophomore in college, I knew this girl named Danielle–well, actually it was more that I knew of her; I didn’t know her personally–who was, in my eyes, just the epitome of gracefulness, sophistication, and beauty. She was the type of person who, when she walked in the room, made me feel awkward, frumpy, and klutzy–things I felt I was anyway, but her presence just intensified those feelings. Now don’t get me wrong; she wasn’t at all stuck up or condescending or anything like that. From what I could see, she was nice, funny, bubbly, smart–you know, everything good–which made it impossible to hate her. Actually, I did hate her for one thing, and that was the fact that I couldn’t find anything to hate about her.
That same year, I had a friend named Jen. She and I for the most part felt the same way about Danielle, although Jen’s self-esteem wasn’t in the basement as mine was. Jen liked who she was and was happy with the way she looked, which was certainly not true for me. She and I were close to the same height, but where I wasn’t much more than a skeleton with skin on (that has certainly changed, let me tell you), Jen had a fuller figure, and in her words, she had a “great chest.” Both Jen and I had taken Spanish in high school, and our shared joke about our figures was that she had “boobisimos,” and I was stuck with “boobitos.”
One day, as Jen and I sat in the cafeteria having dinner, Danielle came breezing in, her long, straight, strawberry-blond hair flowing behind her. She was wearing a simple black minidress that fell halfway between her knees and her hips, with long sleeves that ended in a large ruffle that covered her hands when she let her arms fall to her sides. She also wore thigh-high, black and silver argyle socks and clunky black shoes. As she walked by, smiling at everyone and no one, looking for all the world like a model on a runway, Jen and I just watched her. I swear the two of us must have literally turned green from envy. That was when we had a very memorable conversation about her.
“She is so pretty,” I said to Jen, stabbing at my food with my fork.
“She’s gorgeous,” Jen replied.
“And she’s graceful,” I added. “I’m sure she never trips over her own shadow or drops her books in front of everyone or spills coffee down the front of her dress.”
“Her beautiful, stylish, perfect dress,” Jen continued, looking down with dissatisfaction at her jeans and T-shirt, which she had been perfectly satisfied with only moments before.
I looked down at my own sweatshirt and jeans, feeling the old, familiar awkwardness, frumpiness, and klutziness. “You know what?” I asked, taking a sip of my coffee (and miraculously not spilling any down the front of my shirt).
“What?” Jen replied.
“She’s so graceful, I’ll bet she even farts French perfume,” I quipped, recalling that my current crush had mentioned that Danielle had spent a semester in France. Jen and I both erupted in hysterical laughter. Every time we saw her after that day, we would look at each other and ask, “Do I smell French perfume?”
An interesting addendum to the Danielle saga occurred one night while Jen and I were in the cafeteria with my brother’s roommate, Rich. As before, Danielle breezed in, looking effortlessly stylish and graceful. Jen and I lamented over her beauty, her style, her confidence…and then Rich said something that made our jaws hit the floor. In all seriousness, he looked over at Danielle and then back at us and said, “I honestly don’t know what you two see in her. I think you’re both way prettier than she is.” He thought she was too tall and too thin and had a funny-looking face. He didn’t see, or at least wasn’t as impressed as we were over her poise and fashion sense.
Jen and I both joked about it, flattered at his words, but not really believing them. When we were discussing it later, we explained it away, saying, “What does he know? He’s a guy, after all.”
dandelionviolet 