What Was High School Like? Actor Jason Ritter Answers

This question originally appeared on Quora.

Answer by Jason Ritter, Actor, 'We'll Never Have Paris'

In elementary school, everyone was friends. There were maybe one or two people that maybe had a hard time or were ostracized, but for the most part there weren't cliques. It was pretty rare. All through sixth grade. There were groups of friends but there was no exclusion or anything. All of a sudden, in seventh grade, everyone clumped into their own little interest groups and I couldn't figure it out. There was a lot of seventh grade just walking around saying to myself, "That's cool, I don't need friends." And then I saw Simon Helberg, my co-star and director in We'll Never Have Paris, and his group of friends, and I thought they were so cool. They seemed to have stepped out of the whole hierarchy of high school. They didn't care. You can think we're dorks or you can think we're cool. It doesn't matter.

So I started to try and court them as friends. Try to make them laugh while not trying too hard. And I remember one day, during lunchtime, and we had all been hanging out and laughing. I got my lunch and started heading off and Simon said, "Hey man, where are you eating? You should eat lunch with us."

Inside I was like, "Yes!!" I even went home and told my mom that I had a couple of new friends.

High school is such a miserable and horrible time for anybody that's creative. And Simon and those other guys were my saviors. No matter how many times we got rejected. No matter how many girlfriends we didn't have. WE could make each other laugh. It was like, "I know you're cool, and that's all that matters."

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