I Am Not Your Cup of Tea, I Am an Acquired Taste!

(Note to the Reader: In the Croatian primary education system, grades 1 – 4 are considered lower primary education, whereas grades 5 – 8 are considered upper primary education. In this post, I’ll be using the elementary and middle school as umbrella terms for a broader reference.)

A long, long time ago, when I started elementary school, I attended the same class as a girl called… Well, let’s call her Sanja, because Sanja was her name.

Anyway, for some reason, this… Sanja hated my guts. I was friends – good friends – with everyone in class except her. I tried all sorts of strategies to befriend her, but they just… didn’t work.

Now, Sanja had a very… strong personality, so to say, and her dislike for me went so far that she soon started inventing bad things about me and talking behind my back.

I confronted her about it a few times, rather openly, because if there’s one thing that hits me hard, it’s injustice, and since I’ve always been… swift with words, I called her bluff, fluff, and BS in front of the whole school.

That settled things down a bit for a while, but my little nemesis from 2A silently plotted her next big blow. So slowly, really slowly, she recruited a bunch of our classmates into her ranks and started waging an open, albeit silent, war against me.

That second grade ended with “her against me,” which was something I never could quite understand, but in the third grade, I decided to be a bit wiser.

In the third grade, I decided to turn the other cheek and be friends with everyone. Not because I wanted to steal all her friends so that she wouldn’t have any, but because some of the girls she herded into her pen were really smart, and interesting, and fun… And I really wanted to be friends with them.

For some reason, this strategy actually worked, and the more I focused on being nice to everyone, the more and more friends I had, and by the end of the fourth grade, I was friends with everyone.

Okay, not friends as in “best friends,” but friends as “having a friendly relationship,” you get the gist.

That is, with everyone – except Sanja, of course.

For some reason, completely unknown to me, I couldn’t exchange two decent sentences with her before she’d start rolling her eyes or insulting me on any basis available. And, when you’re in elementary school, the bases are plentiful, and insults are prolific. But trust me when I say – I tried everything. E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.

So anyway, at one moment, the time had come to say goodbye to the class and venture into the uncharted territory of middle school, and I felt there was something inside me longing for closure.

I swallowed my pride, mustered up my guts, and one day, I reached out to her.

“Look, I’m sorry, but can I ask you something? It’s the end (of elementary school) now, and we’re going separate ways (which was true as she was moving away with her family), so do you mind if I ask – why don’t you like me? I mean, I tried everything. I tried to fight you, convince you, be nice to you, but nothing… I’m baffled. It seems I can be friends with everyone, or at least have a decent relationship with everyone, except you. Why? Why don’t you like me?

She looked at me and smiled, almost benevolently, and then sighed.

“Yeah, about that… You… I don’t think you’re bad at all. You’re nice. And you’re smart. And… you’re very persistent and patient, I have to give you credit for that. But you’re just…

And while I was waiting for something specific to hit me like a ton of bricks, like “annoying,” “loud,” “eccentric,” “always right,” the blunt reality seared my ears:

“Not my cup of tea.”

She raised her eyebrows, shrugged her shoulders, and… left.

“Huh.”

I took a deep breath in, and did my best to try to let all that sink in.

“You are not my cup of tea!”

A gust of anger overwhelmed me, echoing her words, and I yelled at the top of my lungs, standing alone in the middle of the school hall: “I am not a f*cking tea!”

I think everybody heard me. Except Sanja, of course.

I was so furious. Not at Sanja, though. I was furious because I just realized I had spent four years of my life trying to please someone who couldn’t care less about me.

For what, exactly? For what?!

So that was it. That was the moment I decided: I will not try to please everyone, I will not try to be liked by everyone, and I will certainly not try to be everyone’s cup of tea.

I’m not a f*cking tea. I may be an acquired taste, but I ain’t no chamomile.

I’ve met many Sanjas in my life after that, and surprisingly, I got on very well with all of them – perhaps precisely because I didn’t try to fit into their teacup.

So, what about you? Who’s your Sanja, and what have you learned from her?