How George Cooper Came to Be
Mood:
caffeinated
Now Playing: How I Came to Be
Topic: George Cooper
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away- REMIX! *Makes weird remix noises*
I wasn't always George Cooper. Once, long, long ago I was someone else. Her name was Chelsea. But Chelsea was very different than me. Although physically we look/looked the same, we are/were very different people on the inside.
Chelsea was young and naive. I don't mean with regards to sex; what kid doesn't know that at a very young age these days? What I mean is that Chelsea didn't understand what the real world was like. Hell, she even had delusions within her own little sheltered life!
George is the result of what happened to Chelsea. A friendship gone bad; a story of love and loss. The friendship of a life time gone down the shitter.
Chelsea had the perfect life. She had not one but two best friends and they always hung out. Their families were friends as well so when there were parties or cook outs they were together as well. In fact, Chelsea's mother was even the girl scout leader for all the girl scouts in her grade. She was the 'second mother' to all three girls and many others. Her mother was there when one of the two best friends', Jane's, mom died when they were 8 and became Jane's mentor. In 4th grade Chelsea and the Jane were put into the same class so that Jane would have an easier time coping with the pain of seeing her mom die slowly and painfully from leukemia. And the other friend, Isabel, joined them some time during elementary school and the group of friends only continued to grow.
Chelsea began kindergarten by randomly going up to Mai'li, an outgoing girl with many friends, if they could hang out together since Chelsea didn't know any one. It was through Mai'li that Chelsea met Jane and began collecting her menagerie of friends. In second grade, Chelsea had the best teacher of her life, and up until the teacher, Miss Kingston, went to Spain a few years ago, Chelsea kept in touch with her, she was
that inspiring. Then continuing into third and fourth grade life was good, if a bit sad, what with Jane's mom dying and all. Fifth was great, too. On her real birthday, Chelsea was accidentally late to class because she had stayed too long talking to Jane before school. As she walked into class the class began to sing. I for one have always been of the opinion that they took that extra time to prepare, but I'm not sure what Chelsea thought.
6th grade saw 'The Group,' as they called themselves, growing once again. This became more volatile, and finally came to a head when one of Chelsea's long time friends introduced Chelsea to her older cousin, Chase. Chase was poetic and extremely romantic and at the age of 11 when Chase asked Chelsea to be his 'girlfriend' Chelsea was sucked in. So she chatted with Chase until that New Year's Eve when his cousin found out and
DEMANDED they not be boyfriend/girlfriend any longer. So, valuing her friendship with Camille over a boy, Chelsea 'broke-up' with Chase, but still continued to talk to him. On Valentine's's day Chelsea bought him a few trinkets and was ready to drive them out to his house, but he never answered his phone or email, so Chelsea stalled. After two months of not getting a response from him, Chelsea finally found out from another friend of hers, Enya, that Chase had been going at with a girl that went to his school since January. That was the beginning of my, George's, foothold in Chelsea.
In seventh grade all Hell broke loose. I don't even remember what exactly happened, and I doubt Chelsea does either, but neither here nor there, Chelsea began full out war with Chase's pushy cousin, Camille. At Jane's big birthday party that she looked forward to every year, I was 'officially' born. May 28th Chelsea was an average teen trying to deal with daily crap, and on May 29 Chelsea woke up a new person, me. At Jane's birthday Camille and the other's began gossiping about another girl the Chelsea was friends with and Chelsea made that fatal mistake that set me, George, free. She stated that she was friends with the girl they were discussing so unflatteringly and that it was unfair for them to be discussing her when she wasn't around to defend herself. And it wasn't even as though they were making intellectual arguments; it was all stuff like "she's fat" (which she wasn't) or "she's such a slut" and while she may have been a touch grown up for our age, that didn't make her a slut, just... Different. Like me. So the next day I woke up, born into Chelsea's body. However, sometimes Chelsea makes appearances at which it's clear that it is she who is speaking, and at other times we blend so much that I myself am not even sure who is speaking. The ironic thing, though, is that I talk to some of the old 'group' now more often than the girl I defended. But I don't regret what I did, just how I said it, preachy and high-and-mighty-like.
That year, close to summer when it came time for the honor roll trip to Disneyland, the group that Chelsea had started, the friends that Chelsea held so dear, refused to allow Chelsea and one other girl, Laura-Beth, to join them in traversing the park. They had obviously thought about not including Chelsea, but the other girl was an arbitrary decision- she'd done nothing to alienate herself or any of the other girls. So Chelsea spent the day alienated and had accidentally taken another innocent down with her. That evening when Chelsea told her mother what was going on she took it even worse than Chelsea did as shes had practically raised some of the girls. From then on Chelsea was not invited to another party or even and spent her eighth grade year as a drifter, sitting wherever she could at lunch, sometimes with the jocks, sometimes with the foreign students learning to speak other languages, and sometimes with the boys, enjoying being the only girl among all the guys in her grade. At the end of the year the popular kids realized what had happened (there were only 100 kids, top, in the grade, we were a very small school) and invited Chelsea to sit with them. Th irony of this was more than I could bear as that's what Camille and all the others had been trying to do- be popular. There is more than one reason why I believe that popularity is an STD (socially transmitted disease) and despise gossip. This story is just a part.
So, in conclusion, Chelsea wanted a name for me, and I had no objection to having something of my own, so we debated on what name would characterize me the best. George comes from Nancy Drew's best friend, George Fayne, whom Chelsea had always admired. Georgia was what I eventually had to elongate it to so people would stop thinking I was a guy. Victoria was my idea because I despised how Chelsea hadn't treated her friend Victoria well enough before she left for Florida and I was determined to never make that same mistake as Chelsea. Cooper was an easily reached mutual agreement because George Cooper (first name an unintentional match, lol) was the guy we wanted to marry. He was the hero in Tamra Pierce's Lioness Quartet, and the King of the Thieves. I felt it appropriate, don't you?
Although none of Chelsea's friends protested her treatment verbally at the time, it has come to light more recently that one, Sarah, did verbally complain to the main forces behind Chelsea's exile in private. I say thank you to her for keeping Chelsea safe for me when I couldn't do anything. The day I began this post was my third birthday, May 29, 2005, three years after my official 'birth.' It may have taken me a while to tell an abbreviated version of Chelsea's story, but it needed to be told, if not for anyone's sake but my own to explain my creation. A few of the differences between me and Chelsea are that I know that you are never entirely safe anywhere, but then what is safe any more? Also, I am a veritable hermit, not leaving my house or room if I don't have to. This may be because of Chelsea's experience or simply my own personal hardwiring. Finally, I know that everything has a price, everyone lies and cheats even if it's only an occasional thing, and sometimes, yes, a boyfriend can be more important than a friendship, though not often. I live with the assumption that all guys are idiots, and am happily surprised when I find ones that aren't such as the guys at Heorot, and my hometown friends like Kyle, Peter, Tim and Tom. Oh, and Squirt, lol. And thank you to Maia, Crecy, and Camilla for teaching me that real friendship can be the best gift anyone can ever give. And to my closest friends from (at one time or another, lol) Heorot, Ver, for showing wisdom and not treating me like a child despite my young age, to C for showing me that not all girls are girly-girls and gossips but actually can be intelligent and caring, to CBK for proving my assumption about guys wrong by being intelligent and helpful, not to mention a great sounding board for when I have questions or just want an ear to bounce an idea off of that I know will be entirely honest and not just tell me what they think I want to hear, and to O for helping to prove my assumption about guys very, very wrong as well as making me laugh even when I don't think I can and letting me bug the Hell out of him when I first joined Heorot, thank you all so, so very much. I sure meant not to make this sound sappy, but thanks so much y'all! You guys rock and have made my life all the world better for having known all of you local and non-local friends, and I know better than to use the word friend lightly.
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