This experience of mine illustrates the kind of damage we can do to ourselves when we compare ourselves to others, especially if we choose to emulate the wrong role model.
When I was a sophomore in high school and couldn't yet drive, it was difficult to date any of my female classmates. No self respecting young man wanted to ask a girl for a date when it was known that one of his parents would be driving, which de facto rendered them a chaperone. The fact that I was generally considered a nerd didn't help.
Until I could drive, my social interactions with young women were limited primarily to the activities sponsored by our church's youth group. The first Sunday of every month, we would, as a group, i.e., without pairing, go bowling, roller skating, swimming, to a movie, or the like. For the balance of each month's Sundays, we met at the church for bible study and refreshments.
By this time (my sophomore year in high school), the demonstrative symptoms of my schizophrenia, such as being terrified of cracks in the floor or the need to tap the toes of my shoes behind me when walking, had mitigated to the point that others were no longer embarrassed to be seen with me. Nevertheless, I was still near the bottom of the social totem pole.
I decided that this had to change. I wanted to be popular. And if that was impossible, I wanted at least to be liked and respected. But I had no clue how to accomplish this.
As luck would have it, there was a senior who worked in my father's grocery store who was very popular with the ladies. Mark was handsome, dressed and combed his hair properly, and knew all the dance steps that marked him as one of the socially elite. He also had an older friend who would occasionally loan him his 1956 Thunderbird. Most importantly, he had mastered the disdainful attitudes and body language of the high school aristocracy.
Seeing an opportunity to win favor with my father, Mark undertook to tutor me in the secret traditions of the social clubs that dominated high school society. I understood what his motivation was but didn't care as long as he would help me. I discovered he was highly intelligent and his marks were quite high, something he didn't want his peers to know.
I was an eager student and my transformation from nerd to sophisticate was effected in a relatively short period of two months. Since I still couldn't actually date any of the girls at school because I remained disadvantaged in terms of transportation, I tested my improvement from week to week on the girls in our church's youth group.
As I had hoped, my relations with the girls in the church youth group also underwent a transformation. But then my schizophrenia got in the way. As is true for many with this illness, I found it difficult to read their facial expressions, voice inflections and body language. My impression was that, as I had hoped, these girls were now showing greater interest in me.
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