CK "fits" in

Anytime someone says something about Dirty Santa gifts or Gift Exchanges or any annonymous gift giving thing, I always think of my sophomore year of high school and how I went to the Brentwood Forensics Christmas party.
David Larder, a senior, kept calling me CK because I was wearing this ridiculously small almost child-sized shirt that had 'Calvin Klein' written across the front. I now look back and interpret this as a nod to the boobs he would have had to eye in order to get that name for me, but oh well.
I hadn't wanted to do the Dirty Santa gag, but somehow was convinced that if I didn't get something I would be weird. So at Target in Antioch earlier that week, I was chided by my mother into buying a tiny photo album. This is because we didn't have lots of money, and a 5$ maximum was put on my budget. Sulking about the album, I picked up some pop rocks in the line on the way out and hoped that my gift would blend well into everybody elses.
These days I look back and wonder why I didn't just pick up a copy of "Everybody Poops" and be done with it.
In any case, my gift ended up being picked next to last when the party finally rolled around, and though I was nervous the entire time gifts were being chosen, I managed not to give away the fact that mine was one of the two remaining gifts.
Dan Patrick picked my gift. He was the same age as me, and had enjoyed a lot of success in debate, earning him the reputation of being a really funny guy who was even a little cute.
Which is all why it hurt so much when Dan openedly groaned.
"Ew, a photo album. Yay." His sarcasm was at a high point.
"Awww." The crowd of Brentwood kids felt genuinely sorry for him, apparently. He rummaged around the bag.
"At least there's some pop rocks." And he opened the candy, and they called the next number.

It really shouldn't have hurt my feelings, but it embarrassed me. I just knew everyone was wondering what lame person had bought a photo album as a Dirty Santa gift. And I couldn't figure Dan out after that. I always saw him as rude. I always remembered the photo album that I was sure he must have thrown away the minute he got home.
And I never fit in with those Brentwood kids.
Standing in the middle of Jenny Martin's parents' three story house in Chenoweth, Calvin Klein shirt straining across the boobs that at least I got noticed for, I felt like I really didn't belong there at all. Why had I even come? I hardly knew these people. I didn't grow up like them in a mini-mansion with comfortably aloof parents. I wasn't going to Yale next year like Jenny was or to UPenn like David was. And its not like the rift was economic, it was totally unidentifiable. Its like the more I tried to fit in, the more I felt insecure.
And you know, it was like that my whole life until after much worse embarrassments, when I came to realize that it was all in my head, and that there wasn't really anything to "fit" into at all.