Even though the band room was nowhere near quiet, when I slammed my pencil on my music stand the volume of the noise startled me. It was significantly louder than I had expected. Incensed, I flopped down in my chair and began ranting.
“Auuuuuggggghhhhhh! This is terrible,” I sighed miserably. “Leopard print is my thing. I swear to it. It’s never been their thing! Since when has it been their thing?”
“Meggan! You poor dear! The sad thing is, is that I made sure it was exactly alike before I told you. That way we wouldn’t be stressing over nothing. How horrible.” Star’s futile attempt to comfort me was a lost cause.
“What are we going to do?” I asked. “We don’t even know who this chick is!”
“I know! My goodness. It is getting so hard to be original this year.” Star yelled in a frenzy.

The subject in question happened to be a fuzzy leopard print belt. ‘Insignificant,’ you might say, but to Star and I it was a crisis. Some popular, preppy girl we didn’t even know owned a fuzzy leopard print belt exactly like mine. Star and I pride ourselves on being original, and when our individuality is threatened, we freak out. This particular occasion was worse than others, because I was already upset about my new school shoes. A senior I know has the same shoes as I do, and I specifically ordered them from a catalog so no one else would have the exact same ones. But no, a senior just had to get them. I was already reeling from that blow to my individuality when I learned of the girl with the belt. What made the whole situation worse was the sole fact that it was a popular girl that owned it, because the whole “I’m popular, I have money, I’m spoiled” kind of image disgusts me. If anybody had to have the same thing as me, I would rather it had been someone I knew, so I could convince her never to wear it again. Well, maybe I wouldn’t go so far as to do that, but I would be able to handle it better. If only she was someone I could stand, at the very least…but no.

To this day, I still don’t know who it is that has my belt, but I’ve been informed that there are more girls with it. So the count is up to five so far (counting me), and I’m just incensed. You might argue that I’m being self-centered and selfish, but that’s not really the case at all. It’s more a fight for originality than anything, and I certainly hope I win.