Nice or Just Quiet?

I recently came across a very old diary, from when I was maybe six or seven, one of the diaries that came with prompts and sparkly gel pens to encourage kids to write in them. And one of the prompts happened to be the question:

What is one thing that no one knows about you?

And the partner:

What is one thing everyone knows about you?

To the first, I said something ridiculous, like I love to draw. Or read books. Whatever the example I gave was, it definetly was not something no one knew about me. I am pretty sure everyone knew that I loved to read (still do, by the way). It might have been helped by the fact I once brought two new books to school one day and asked everyone which one they thought I should read first.

Yeah.

But the second answer is what actually stumped me for a moment, and prompted yet another deep thinking session. (I'm not like this most of the time, it's just a phase, I promise!)

I wrote down, in sparkly green gel pen, 'Everyone knows I'm nice!' Followed by about a billion exclamation points and hearts.

That's when the alarm started sounding in my head, because I thought, 'Wow. It's such a shame I have steadily gotten more and more mean as I've grown. I wish I could regain that innocent sweetness.'

The kicker? I was just quiet in elementary, and middle, and most of high school. That's it. Just quiet, content to sit still and read a book for two hours instead of talking to my neighbors. And it's actually really bothering me that everyone knew me as the 'nice' girl when I was actually the 'quiet' girl.

Because, if I'm terribly and dreadfully honest, I've never been nice, or sweet. I've always been a slightly cynical, quiet person. But my elementary self seemed more than happy to go along with it, because it meant no one would bother me.

Hrm.

On the bright side, no one remembers much from elementary school anyway, so my nice girl reputation will probably be intact for forever. And if I really want to, I can try to stop being mean and try to live up to my reputation at last. 'Cause, hey, new year, new me, right?