It was a bright, clear day; the hot-yet-not-severely-hot kind that screams "early summer." The school year was almost over, and it was one of those final lunch periods when the failures have already failed and the honor rollers have already... been honored, while we're all just waiting for the year to end. I was sitting at the end of a hall that protruded from the school, alone, back against the window, reading my worn-down copy of The Fountainhead under the fresh light behind me. Usually I went to my friend's house to play video games, but on this one I was alone and happy and learning through fiction. "Why is Derick all emo in the corner?" A sentence about the principled architect was suddenly interrupted by a voice in front of me, the speaker's face invisible behind the book. A few seconds past before I lowered it to look at him without moving my eyes and saw that someone was talking to me, as this was before I learned that third-person reference was totally the new second-person reference. I blinked. "Emo?" "Yes." "Me?" "Yes." "Why?" "You're all alone and sad." "I'm not sad." He snickered as though that was obviously a lie. My presumptious mind was all but certain that the thought in his head was "Alone and not sad? Preposterous! These are mere lies to protect yourself from embarassment!" He went off, apparently certain that no more comment was needed for my ridiculos assertion. I returned to my reading and didn't think about the subject again until a moment ago, almost a year later. In its worst sense, as a valid term, what does the pop culture word "emo" mean? A culture among modern teenagers characterized by being overtly emotional and dramatic, while using one's apparent psychology as a means of getting attention and sympathy. So why have I been noticing more and more that any sign of anti-social characteristics are called emo? My theory is that so many (not all) people are so social-minded and shallow that they assume that no one could possibly want to voluntarily spend their time doing something other than bicker and joke with their peers about things they are convincing themselves they care about. So if one is alone one must be sad. And again, because of their social-mindedness, one must also only do things alone to attract attention and sympathy. This is not me. I promise. A lot of people hate me. In real life and on the Internet. It's unfortunate, but it doesn't hurt my feelings. I have a lot of friends too, just as many as anyone else, which is what matters, and I could hardly care less about the unusually high number of haters. And I do a lot of things alone. Not because I have to. Not because I hate the world. Because for some things, it makes more sense to be alone. The spaces in-between leave us room to grow, to use the most cheezy yet valid song lyric Neil ever wrote. Don't cry for me. I won't cry for you and take pictures. Hell, I don't even HAVE a MySpace. | 
