Labels Are For Soup Cans!

There are some people at our school, let’s call them *Amy, *Sally, and *Evan, who have recently been basing their lives on being a certain type of person. It is their goal to become ‘emo’, or people who hate life, cut themselves, swear like nobody’s business, write depressing poetry (which is usually crappy!), and complain about everything on myspace. These three people have been going around school telling people just how emo they are! The sad thing is, they aren’t! Labels are not a good thing. If they are that important to you, you will just end up wasting your life trying to fit in! Let’s take a look at these three people so that we can get to know them a little more personally!
We will start off with Amy. I haven’t had that many chances to get to know her but from what I have observed, she is a big huge faker. She looks like she hates dressing the ‘emo’ way, hates to pretend to be emo, and just wants friends. The only thing is, she is just digging herself a deeper hole because the people she would want to be friends with hate her because she tries too hard to be emo.
Next we have the lovely Sally. In eighth grade, I was friends with her. I saw her in the halls and we would stop and have a little chat or we would just wave and trade smiles when we passed. This year, I walked by her in the hall and said hi. All I got in return was a few choice words and a finger thrown in my face. It didn’t take me long to discover that she had decided that she didn’t want to be the kind of person who wants to hang out with people like me (i.e. a ‘prep’). She, unlike Amy, really seems to want emo status. Amy just wants to feel like she has friends. Sally had friends.
Last but not least is Evan. Even and I got along famously when he was in my science class last year. He was very nice and sweet and one of the few boys who was not ashamed of being smart and showing it! He is still nice to me when we are talking one on one but as soon as his friends come around, he doesn’t talk to me or even look at me! He never used to care about what people thought of him but now he tries way too hard to impress everyone!!
From what I have seen, labels suck! Don’t label people and don’t try to label yourself! You can spend your whole life trying to get a name for yourself but wouldn’t it just be easier if you could just float from group to group without having to worry about what your sacred label is? Believe me, it’s easier just to be nice to everyone! And who knows, if you give different people a chance, they might surprise you! But the only label that I want: person.

*(Names have been changed)