I received a friend request from a familiar face tonight. Unfortunately, he isn't my friend. In fact, he triggers memories of the time I had less than friends.

During secondary school, I was a blooming, walking biological epitome of puberty. I had oily hair, oily skin, and really bad complexion. And when I mean bad, I mean terrible. The type you take one look at and go screaming down the other direction of the street. Okay, for the lack of exaggeration, my face was sprouting huge yellow or red pimples on a daily basis (one went down and another grew in the meantime), and I was just RED. And for that reason, I was the biggest joke of the school population from the very first year I enrolled.

Senior girls walked past me calling nicknames. I was constantly confronted by the gangster-wannabes who thought that I had a 'problem' because I was not afraid of their taunts - to be honest, I was more than terrified, but I never let it show; I just continued to be my usual chatty self with others, and they did not like that I seemed unaffected. Guys dared each other to see who could 'get together' with me the longest without getting nauseous by looking at my face. Friends fell out with me because they had to choose between staying with me and getting mocked for it, and shunning me and being normal like the rest of the school; they chose the latter choice. Even teachers refused to take my side; they saw me as a misfit who could not be well-behaved like the rest of the girls in the class.

I even had a very unoriginal nickname. Remember the period the world was hit by the SARS virus? Three quarters of the upper secondary population used to call me SARS - acronym for Sue Ann Really Sucks (they did not have enough intelligence to find out that my name is not two, but one. So technically if Sueann really sucks, it would be SRS. But hey.)

All of the aforementioned were just acts of schooltime immaturity, and in reality, it happens in high schools everywhere till this day. There is always the "Dunce" of the school. Too bad, it had to be me. And till this day, I still have trouble coming to terms with my own esteem because I always can always remember how people shunned me due to my awkwardness, ugliness, or lack of social status. But it's getting better, I promise.

By the way, this was the period of my life that I labelled myself Miss Invisible. Not because I was invisible (I guess I was not, judging from all the teasing that put me in the spotlight of notoriety), but because I felt like I was nothing, serving no value in the eyes of everyone else around me. Within the frequency of mainstream popularity, I was a wallflower amongst the "cheerleaders" and "jocks" and "prom kings and queens". And like Marie Digby hoped for someone to notice her in a good light, I hoped the same. But I guess the opportunity did not present itself till later in my life, which is a different story.

So anyway, this particular 'no-friend-of-mine' dude was a year my senior, and he used to scream "PIMPLY-FACE!!!!" at me from the second floor whenever he saw me. I was 15 and an emotional wire. At that time I thought that the teasing days were over the moment I stepped up to the upper secondary category. I guess some people just don't grow up.

Years later after I had graduated, I bumped into the bugger on my way to the beach. He did a double take when he saw me and I didn't really know whether that was a good or bad thing until I received a friend request from him and a message asking me, in a very uncool fashion, to accept it as "I from ur school also he he". (I swear those were the exact words. I still remember them after 3 years.)

I ignored his request, but was embraced by more persistent requests and messages saying the same thing (of course phrased differently, but still in the wonderful command of English language). I am not one who blocks people on my social networking sites because I believe in forgiveness and tolerance. So I merely deleted and ignored these pesky notifications. And alas, here I am on a new social networking site, and what else may I find tonight but his friend request?

I decided to be blatant about my reasons behind ignoring his friend requests, and so sent him a message. The following is how our short conversation went:

me: sorry I don't know you.
him: i *insert name* *insert school* (yes there is no error in my grammar here. He basically said "I John Garden Secondary".)
me: yeah the one who called me Pimply-face! We're not friends.
him: =.= sorry

I guess I made my point clear to him.

It's not surprising how looks can so easily switch the mindset of someone so shallow. I was once ugly and he did not hesitate to insult me in my face. I guess I became slightly better looking as I grew up, and that resulted in him persistently wanting to be my friend suddenly.

And funnily enough, I've seen it happen even with supposedly 'grown up' young adults. A girl is a nobody until she gets together with an It Boy. Immediately everyone wants to be friends with her. A misunderstanding takes place between two, and people abandon the not-so-cool one for the one with higher power and better social standing. A boy can't decide whether to choose between two girls, and his friends offer that the cuter, smaller sized one is better even though she had constantly badmouthed the other plainer, bigger sized girl. Okay, I'm saying this on the context that I have thoroughly investigated the true opinions of each party and I am not jumping to conclusions. Anyway, they're just mild examples. And, we read about it all the time in chick-lit books like Gossip Girl. Looks like the ideals of favouritism and social castes aren't new.

But it makes me happy, somehow. Because it's comforting to know that I don't have to make childish choices driven by groupthink. Maybe, I have this "no-friend-of-mine" to thank. Along with 75% of the school population.