Puberty

No matter how talented you are, how good you look, or how charming and charismatic you may be…in high school it only takes one flaw to pluck you from the mountaintop of popularity and banish you to the valley of social obscurity and ridicule…or as we like to call it…Ebonerddom. True, genetics may show favoritism to some by insuring that they’ll always be stronger, faster, and better looking (case in point); and show disdain for others by insuring that they’ll always have that lazy eye, or a muffin top, or just simply that they’ll always look like their face was on fire at some point and someone tried to put it out with an ice pick (case in point)…but good old puberty is always there to serve as the great equalizer. With her blatant disregard for discretion and appropriateness of time, puberty is always there to rear her ugly, under-developed head and knock even the coolest kid down a few pegs. Sure little Miss “Captain of the Cheerleading Squad” has rich parents, a killer wardrobe, and the face of a Nubian goddess, but she won’t be all that on the day of the big game when the tissue she’s been stuffing her bra with (because good old puberty has decided to slow her development) falls out just as she’s topping the pyramid, or on School Picture Day when her silky smooth face suddenly develops a zit so big and elaborate that you’d swear it was growing a tooth and an independent personality (just imagine this on some chick's forehead). And maybe Mr. “Star Quarterback” has the car everyone wants, the girl everyone wants, and biceps the size of small under-developed countries…but it’s hard to stay the “big man on campus” when all the fellaz are changing in the locker room and it becomes evident that he’s the only one in a room of 17 year olds who’s balls haven’t dropped yet (since I can't show you what tiny balls look like...uh...this is what third-world country sized arms look like).

Make no mistake, however, fellow Ebonerd. Puberty does keep the cool humble…but she is no friend to you either. She may succeed at making sure the social elite get knocked down a time or two, but she’s even MORE effective in making sure the Ebonerd NEVER rises above his or her position of social ineptitude. You THOUGHT it was bad that you were in the glee club…and that you have to do the lead part of the production in front of the entire school assembly…AND that you have to do it in a lycra onesie (this is you)…but just wait until good old puberty shows up in the performance to make sure your voice cracks like a handful of walnuts right in the middle of your big finale solo. Or you were convinced that nothing was worse than the hand-me-downs you are forced by your fiscally responsible parents to wear (which had you looking like this...but in 1999), but puberty says…nothing goes better with outdated clothes than a fresh case of severe acne. Or maybe you even thought that your interest in stamp collecting, cultural anthropology and the metabolic migration practices of the tsetse fly were socially polarizing enough, but now thanks to puberty delaying the introduction of bass into your voice, whenever you bore some normal person to death with your conversation drawn from said topics you get to do it in a Minnie Ripperton-esque tone (this'll give you an idea of what I'm talking about), despite the fact that you're a 17 year-old boy.

Ah puberty…for dragging the high low and taking the low…uh…even lower...we salute you. Keep US nerdy.