Miss Piggy

I just ran across a last name at work that reminded me of someone from high school. She was a shy, quiet girl who was not all-together unpopular, but definitely not one of the more popular ones. A studious sort who everyone probably knew by name, but for nothing else. A plain Jane if you will.

Well, she got popular, but not for the right reasons.

You see, she had a nickname of "Miss Piggy". I have to admit there was a resemblance and I'm sure that amongst my friends I was a jerk enough to refer to her by that rather than her real name. I would NEVER say it in front of her and to my knowledge nobody else did or whether she knew people called her that.

Thinking back, though, she had to know, didn't she? Somewhere, somehow she must have either overheard it, or a friend told her or whatever. It seems more obvious as time passes how cruel kids were to each other. I certainly could be as well.

But that alone is not enough to sustain this post.

After our Junior year, my school's version of Jake Ryan from Sixteen Candles had a bash. It was a huge ordeal except that we all respected him too much to put pizza on the turntable, T.P. his house or put laundry detergent in the air ducts. He was in every way the epitome of Jake in that he was rich (dad was a doctor), good looking, popular (football team captain - class president) and had the best car by far ('67 Mustang Fastback all souped up). I think I had a man-crush on him even or at the least, killer amounts of envy. Plus, he wasn't pretentious and was a genuinely nice guy to everyone.

Anyway, it seemed every kid in school was at this party, including Miss Piggy. Of course, there was heavy binge-type drinking along with quarters (universal drinking game?). Stories differ about how we got to the next part. I won't go into the conjecture, since it doesn't matter, but let's just say that our heroine ended up standing on the sofa yelling, "Miss Piggy? You think I'm Missy Piggy? I'll show you Miss Piggy." With that, she lifted her shirt to show an extremely transparent bra and all that was underneath it. Woah! I think the Billy Idol record screeched to a halt.

Now, most high school juniors would kill to see anything close to that. Many laughed but most I think merely cringed. Myself included. All I could think of was how this poor thing ruined the rest of her high school years. I have no idea what her point was, or how she "showed us" but I'm sure she was drunk. Maybe she was on other stuff too. Shame what an apparent spur of the moment thing can do to someone.

Quickly, a friend grabbed her, pulled her shirt down and escorted her from the party. I'm not sure if I saw her again that year or if we had more class or not. She returned for her senior year which I'm sure couldn't get over fast enough.

I'd love to say there was John Hughes movie-type redemption of "plain girl gets popular guy" or that she got a supportive slow clap type scene or made Senior Prom Queen. But it didn't happen that way. Does it ever in real life? Instead, she probably heard whispers and felt strange whenever she walked by a group. I remember individuals going out of their way to say a friendly "hello" but no doubt the level of discomfort was inescapable.

I'm not sure how the rest of us could have handled it differently. To my knowledge nobody ever really confronted her, or teased her about it and I was pretty much in the social pipeline at school. Perhaps at the time, though, we were all caught up in our own insecurities and not mature enough to see past our own level of "popularity" to make things easier for her. Assuming we could have.

That poor, poor girl. I sincerely hope everything has turned out all right for her and that she's gone on to success and kids and is able to put that all behind her. I wonder though.