Teen Drama

I had a friend in high school named Justin -- very good guy, and so was his brother. But his brother was a perennial loser -- shabby dresser, thin, bad skin, big nose, weak chin, etc. We loved the guy because he could talk music and loved geeky things. He was a film school student and would recommend we watch great flicks. Really nice guy.

There was a girl who we knew that he eventually developed a crush on... it all came to a head at some barbecue that I wasn't at.

There was a trampoline... and at some point, Savannah (the girl he liked) was jumping on the trampolien at the same time as Justin's brother, and, in fear of falling off, she had grabbed onto Justin... Nothing else happened that day in 2002. It was probably one of the most forgettable summer days in the world, except two weeks later this blew up in our social scene...

Justin's brother had written a love-letter via AOL mail to Savannah, and in it this goofy dork confessed that he had great feelings for her. He candidly spoke about how he had been so lonely in New York, and had so little interactions with others, and that when Savannah touched him while they were on the trampoline, it was so powerful to him -- he became light headed, the touch was electrifying! He felt alive and awoken, and now he really would love to take her on a date and show her a good time...

When I had heard about this I felt a little sick to my stomach and wondered if we were all laughing because of this sappy love letter that was a failure... But it turned out that Savannah had spun this that it was not pathetic, funny, cringeworthy, but that Justin's brother is some kind of creep and scary.

It baffled me. The loser went from a guy who whiffed bad in a loveletter confession to someone who she had made sound like a potential threat. Truth be told, this drama was really just getting mileage because the cut-copy-pasted loveletter was so hilarious, but she and some others thought that people were interested because "we've gotta get this guy under control!"

Justin's brother was humiliated, and Justin felt probably a whole different collection of difficult emotions.

I still think about this as a good example of why teenagers are idiots, and also how the perspectives of people can be so radically different.