“The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.”

- Lily Tomlin

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There were girls that I once knew, not well, but I knew them all the same. I was in high school then, and they were too, and as teens are wont to do, they’d started a competition with each other. Two warring sides for two different stereotypes. Over a boy.

I think that in a way they knew how ridiculous it was, like a child taking a toy just because another had it, but they continued all the same; fighting over a boy who cared little for either of them.

As it was happening, as I watched from the sidelines, I didn’t think either of them would get him. They were both fighting for fools’ hope, I thought, but eventually one of them did get the boy. She lorded it over the other girl as though she’d just been crowned Queen of the World.

Eventually the boy cheated on her, and I couldn’t find it in myself to be surprised, the boy was rather known for that, after all.

And the Queen was back among the peasants and it was time for the competition to start again, over something new. Those two did that all through high school, sometimes one would win, sometimes the other. In the end though they always equaled out to start again.

They weren’t capable of thinking one better than the other, too similar for it, though they’d never admit that.

What it really comes down to is that they never really changed, no matter what they won or lost, so when the thrill of a win wore off they’d have to go back and prove themselves again; nothing’d changed. They were both still who they were; still human and nothing could change that.

So I sat on the sidelines and learned vicariously, so that I’d always know that all I am is human. No better than anybody else.