Peers

A clique, as we all know, is a group of tightly woven friends who pride themselves on simply being together at the exclusion of everyone else. The only thing more uncomfortable than approaching a clique (usually a group of giggly or snobby girls and self-intoxicated guys) is being shot out of a cannon directly at a brick wall. Had I only been shot at brick walls as a teenager, I might be a little happier today. I've noticed that friendships in general are a lot easier to form and maintain for guys than they are for girls.

If you're worried about a teenaged son or daughter who doesn't seem to fit in...take heart - and read on:When I was already a mom with kids of my own, I re-met Anne, a girl who had been in my fifth grade class and every class after that, but who had been so quiet that I barely knew she existed. She came over for dinner one night with her kids. My husband asked her how she had liked the kids at the schools we had gone to together. Her answer was simple - - but to me it was stunning. "I didn't have anything in common with them," she said. Here we were, two girls in the same school who both felt out of it. But I had blamed myself. I thought must not look right, act right, BE right because I wasn't popular.

There was one boy named Elliot who was in my classes. He was a smart kid. I would call him almost every night to help me with my homework. We went through algebra, trigonometry, and calculus together. We laughed a lot on the phone, making fun of our teachers. We talked about the books Siddhartha and Steppenwolf. We talked about our parents. But I never ever considered him a potential boyfriend. Even though he was fun on the phone, Elliot was basically a nerd. He was short, he wore white socks, had braces, played the oboe-and got good grades. I also got good grades. But for some strange reason, I tried to keep that a secret from my friends.

Some time just past childhood and before adulthood, our peers become our central focus: who likes us, who we like, who we dress the same as, who we wouldn't be caught dead with. It's like the whole world suddenly revolves around our friends. But what really makes a peer a friend? How can you tell if you are in it for the perks, or if you also love the quirks? Is it the person or her closet full of clothes and popular friends? The person or his awesome CD collection? Are you just thrown together by circumstance, or is this a bud worth seeing also outside of chemistry class? Does it matter? Of course it does. Here's why: True friendship, the kind where beyond having interests in common, you also like who is inside, is the only kind that lasts.

There she is. All smiles and charm and wide gestures and tilted head. Sparkling eyes, loud-ish giggle. Great clothes, great style, great posture, probably great looking. Of course, you can barely see her because she is surrounded by what looks like a bunch of Secret Service agents, but you know she's there. Everyone does. She is the popular girl. And while you may make fun of her, you and your best friend, when you are sure no one can hear you - how shallow or petty or fake she is, I'll bet that for at least five minutes every day, you wish you were her. Or at least, her best friend. Someone who slept at her house sometimes, tried on her clothes.

Yeah, I know I've got this earring (and tattoo, by the way) and some people think it's cool and some think it's weird. There are mornings when I face the mirror and I think that I look pretty cool and sometimes I look and think, "Oh man, what have I done?" My parents had a major freak-out attack over both and I got an infection (really, no big deal) from the earring. So all in all, I figure that I'm pretty qualified to talk about the subject of body art (piercing and tattooing). But the main thing is not to talk, but to ask.

Hey, you know everybody wants to be cool. We wanna look cool, have cool friends and do cool things, but did you ever wonder where the term "cool" came from? What does "cool" really mean? Anyway, when I asked my history teacher if I could do my term paper on "The History of Cool", she kind of stared at me, rolled her eyes and walked away. So rather than waste this very cool theory of mine, I figure I'd share it with you. The history of cool is like the history of the bagel--everyone wants to claim they invented it. So I figure my theory is as good as any. As I see it, somewhere around the Paleolithic Era (that's Stone Age for you illiterates), the idea behind the word "cool" came into being.

Hi. I'm 15 and I've never had a date or even asked anyone out. There is this one girl named Sara (not her real name) that I like a lot but I don't know how to ask her out because I've had no experience with asking someone out on a date. I've kept running everything through my head to think of what I could do and I always get a good idea but whenever I even see her, my mind goes blank. I know it's not because of fear of rejection or something like that. I would do ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING for her, when I even look at her I get all weak in the knees and other things happen also. My friend who had the same thing happen to him, says that this is true love. I would trust my life with him and he says I should ask Sara out and I want to but, I've never had any experience with this and I don't want to scare her away. So my question is how do I get her to go out with me?

Q I really like this girl but I am too chicken to ask her out because she is "cool". What should I do?

Advice From Sara BODY IMAGE AND EATING DISORDERS How Do I Get Myself to Love My Body? Q: I'm 20 years old (in a month) and I've been in recovery from anorexia for about 9 months now. I eat pretty normally now, except for a few quirks I have.

Q I have a problem with my boyfriend. I care about him a lot, and we've been going together for 4 months. He's a senior, I'm a junior. We have our good times, but lately all we've been doing is fighting. And mostly it's about stupid things. He'll get mad at himself for not doing something right and he'll start screaming madly about how stupid he is, and how he can't do anything right. I tell him to stop talking like that and that it's not true, it was just a mistake, and we all make mistakes.

My "first love" was Jeff, a decent 17-year-old with a few problems. (Don't we all have them?) I put "first love" in quotes because at the time, I didn't think of myself as being in love with Jeff. What I felt about him didn't match what I saw in the movies or read in books. I felt intensely about him - I liked him tremendously, I wanted to be with him all the time. I enjoyed myself incredibly when we were together. I wanted to know him better. I was attracted to him. I was interested in everything he had to say. I cared about him. (I still care about him all these years later.) But I wasn't in that altered state of consciousness that I thought of - and later experienced - as being in love.

I was 15 the first time I saw Jeff. I had had crushes on boys before, but this was different. With the guys before him, it had been secret and one-way. I liked them from afar. I never let anything on. I would have been mortified if they had known. But with Jeff it felt different than any of those crushes. It felt more real. I didn't think of it as a crush. One night when a bunch of us were out together, I saw Jeff pull out a chair for the girl sitting next to him. I was impressed with that. And there were other little things about him that spelled QUALITY. Also, we had "chemistry." I liked the way he stood with his thumbs hooked into his back pockets.

Invisible. That's what I was when I was with Nikki, my best friend. Ten years later and it's still with me. She had some light inside her body, or something, that drew the guys to her like insects (which isn't such a bad comparison, right?) The weird thing is, she was no prettier than I was. We were both smart, both capable, and neither of us were "easy" - - but there she was, center stage, while I hung back, kind of like her little sister, tagging along.

I recently asked an 18-year-old guy if he believed in platonic relationships between guys and girls. His answer was interesting: "Only if there's a barrier," he said, "like if she's dating your friend or if she's your cousin. But generally - I'd say no." After years of field research on the subject (hey, someone has to do it) I have found this to be true. "We're only friends" is a cop-out: it means you don't know each other that well, that one of you feels something the other doesn't, or that you are lying to yourselves. Strike this comment if one of you is gay or attached, or if you are related. It is my feeling that when you have a close friend of the opposite sex, with whom you share everything and where no mitigating factors exist, at least one of you will be harboring deeper feelings for the other.

We have all been there: Madly crushing on someone, and trying to piece together clues like some two-bit detective. Did he mean I looked good, as in, better than yesterday when I looked stupid? Or did he mean I looked good, as in, he'd love to have a bite? Does she think I'm cool, as in, yeah, let's hang out? Or does she mean cool, like, cool enough for her? Well, how do we find out? None of us ever wants to ask for a clarification, unless we are sure what the answer will be. And there comes a point when having your best friend scout for you is pathetic.

Steven McDonald. I loved him. He was tall and muscular, with curly blonde hair. When he smiled, he blushed, and his cheeks turned pink. He was on the basketball team, the baseball team and the football team. Somehow I knew that his father worked as a prison guard. I'd heard rumors that he had a brother in prison for murder-something to do with drugs. Steven McDonald. I imagined kissing his fingertips, putting his hand to the side of my face, feeling the warmth of his palm on my cheek. I wanted to kiss the pain from his face, the suffering of having a brother who was a murderer.

So now I'm Jen's Back Up Plan. The Next Best Thing if Roger is otherwise occupied. It used to be me and Jen . Just us - every lunch-break, every night on the phone, every Saturday night at the mall. But now she's with Roger, and I have to ask her when she's free to talk or go out instead of it just being assumed that we would be hanging out together. Last Saturday night, Jen asked me to come with her and Roger to the movies. I really didn't want to go - I knew I'd be left out. Jen sat between Roger and I, and they whispered and held hands throughout the whole movie. She only remembered to talk to me during intermission.. They asked me to come with them afterwards for pancakes and shakes - as if I would! As if they really wanted me to.

OK, so some jerk was walking off with your fantasy girl. Now, you took a good look at yourself and a good look at him and you think, "What could she possibly see in him?" So you figure she fell off the deep end and who needs a babe with bad taste. But then your friends start complaining about the same thing happening to them--I mean, these are cool dudes and the girls are dropping them left and right. So you figure that either the school has been invaded by aliens or some kind of toxic chemical has reached the water fountain supply.

This is really odd to me to discuss my problems online, but I am losing myself very fast. I have been with my boyfriend for 5 years and we have a 3-year-old son. We started out young, especially me. I am 19 now, he's 23. Before I got pregnant everything was fine, and we never fought. Now that's all we do. We try hard not to, but theirs no trust between us. I have been trying hard to fix things between us, and I am out of ideas. Where do I start? I love him with all my heart and I don't want to loose him. Help! - Needideas

Summer of 1971. I was 17, a couple of weeks out of 10th grade, enjoying my first cigarette and looking forward to a lazy vacation. I had never faced a serious problem, never taken an important decision, and never led to believe that I was anything but a typical teen-ager. I loved the Beatles, the Doors and Velvet Underground. Flower Power was groovy and the future ... well, I didn't think about the future. Meeting Prince Charming Then I met him. Nothing dramatic. A friend of my older sister's.

I've gotten lots of letters concerning teen marriages. Am I too young? What's the success rate? What are the issues we need to look at and discuss? It's my hope that in reading this, some of your questions will be answered. It's also my hope that you'll be left with even more to think about, perhaps aspects you hadn't thought of before.