I knew I was average. I had learned this fact on my first day of Geelong Grammar School. In Grovedale, the suburb of Geelong where I grew up, we had the biggest and most beautiful house in the neighborhood—a brand-new two-story AV Jennings home with a swimming pool. My father was a well-respected community organizer, the founder of the Grovedale Rotary Club, and there was talk of him running for mayor. But on my first day at my new school, when I saw one kid being dropped off in a helicopter and others arriving in BMWs and Jaguars, it became obvious to me that I was not like them. They owned things my family couldn’t afford. And while I had felt jealousy before, seeing that boy get out of a helicopter elicited a brand-new, uncomfortable feeling. Jealousy for me had been rooted in the belief that what I was jealous of was attainable, but this was different. I felt intimidated. I felt less than, not equal, and on a completely different, un-relatable level. Throughout the day I heard stories from the students of summer vacations spent yachting around the Caribbean while I had spent my summer pretending to be an Olympic gymnast in the cul-de-sac. I was embarrassed to think that I had been strutting around town like a spoiled little rich girl when I wasn’t rich at all.
“Why didn’t you tell me we were poor?” I fired at my mother with uncharacteristic anger when I got into the car. (I have since learned that anger is my first response to embarrassment.) My mother was clearly hurt by my question, and as we drove home in her Mazda 626, she stared at the road between her hands clenched at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel, and explained to me with tears in her eyes that she’d tried very hard to make sure our lives continued as if dad were still alive.
“But we’ve always been poor!” She couldn’t possibly know how poor we were. She probably didn’t even know what a yacht was.
When I saw my brother later that night, I attacked him. I was especially angry with my brother, since he had attended the school for two years prior to my arrival. Surely he could’ve told me the truth.
“We’re not poor, stupid. We’re average.”
Average. It was the worst, most disgusting word in the English language. Nothing meaningful or worthwhile ever came from that word. In my twelve-year-old mind, there was no point in living if you were average. An average person doesn’t cure cancer, win Olympic medals, or become a movie star. What kind of a boring, uninspired life was I going to live if I was thought of as “average” in any category? My brother could not have levied a greater insult than calling me average with the exception of “normal,” “ordinary,” and “mediocre.” These were words that I hated just as much as the word “average,” and I knew they were lined up right around the corner ready to attach themselves to me like a name badge unless I did something exceptional and gave myself a better label, starting with my unexceptional, common-sounding name. My name was average. I knew this because I wasn’t the only one who had it. When I was eight, I was a track and field star. My race was the 200 meters. At the regional track and field meet, there was a girl in my heat with the same name—Amanda Rogers—who was my only real competition. I simply couldn’t see the point of running the race. Where’s the glory in beating the girl with the same name? Why make a name for myself when somebody else already had it? Amanda Rogers in first, followed by Amanda Rogers in second?
I needed to give myself a better label. Model. Law student. Actress. No one was average at my new school. They were rich. I needed to be exceptional just to fit in.
The thought of being in the middle of the pack had always worried me. From my first awareness of competition—that someone could win and another person could lose—the pressure to excel in everything I attempted was immense. I had to win, get an A, and take home the prize. Even when I took first prize, topped the class, won the race, I never really won anything. I was merely avoiding the embarrassment of losing. When ability is matched by expectations, then anything less that an exceptional result was laziness. And laziness in my opinion was shameful.
But I wasn’t naturally inclined to excel in all the tasks I was given as a child. For example, I was never good at math. Even basic addition eluded me. I learned my multiplication table at school because we used to have “heads up” competitions in front of the class. The teacher would invite two students to come to the blackboard and would then proceed to ask them various multiplication questions such as “six times seven” or “five times three.” I drilled the answers into my brain. All day long this little eight-year-old would be silently playing the game of teacher and student; the teacher firing questions with machine-gun rapidity, the student, armed with preparation, deftly deflecting every bullet. I made it through the third grade undefeated. But I wasn’t a math champion for long. By age fourteen I was bawling over my physics homework.
Devastation was my usual reaction to things I couldn’t comprehend. It would start with mild anxiety if the answer wasn’t at the ready, and would progress to full-blown terror, physically manifesting in sweating, yelling, crying, hitting myself on the head, and chanting, “I don’t understand” until I was exhausted and on the verge of collapse. In order to prepare myself for a less than perfect result, I would occasionally give myself the opposite of a pep talk by writing hundreds of times in a journal, “I will not get honors,” as I awaited the results of a ballet exam, for example. I’m not sure if this ritual actually helped me to accept the less than perfect grade I was preparing myself for, because I always did get honors. Dancing six days a week for two hours a day, plus hours of practice at home will get anyone honors, much less a nine-year-old whose only competition had just learned to point her toe. The ballet school I attended was a small side business of a onetime professional dancer who rented out a church hall to teach young kids the basics of dance in a suburb of a mid-sized town. Nobody took it seriously. I treated it like it was the Australian Ballet.
I don’t know where this pressure came from. I can’t blame my parents because it has always felt internal. Like any other parent, my mother celebrated the A grades and the less-than-A grades she felt there was no need tell anybody about. But not acknowledging the effort that ended in a less than perfect result impacted me as a child. If I didn’t win, then we wouldn’t tell anyone that I had even competed to save us the embarrassment of acknowledging that someone else was better. Keeping the secret made me think that losing was something to be ashamed of, and that unless I was sure I was going to be the champion, there was no point in trying. And there was certainly no point to just having fun.FISHCan I have your attention please? Everybody. I really have splendid news. I would like to introduce to you all, Nelle Porter. As of today she’ll be joining us as a new attorney. She is going to be an outstanding addition, and I trust that you’ll all help make her feel as welcome as I know she is. Nelle Porter.NELLEThank you. Thank you. It’s a tough decision to change jobs, but I’m excited. I’m grateful to Richard and to Paul for the offer and also Ally . . . my brief chat with her . . . well, I knew coming here it would be fun.