You’re right about kids. Yesterday I made an origami armadillo out of a dollar bill and showed it to my 14-year-old son. He goes, Wow! That’s amazing! and jumps out of his seat (in the middle of playing World of Warcraft, no less) to give me a big hug. He says, Good job, Mom! He made me feel like I’d invented faster-than-light travel. 
When I was a little little girl, my daddy told me I was the most beautiful, smartest little girl in the world. He told me that the minute I was born, I looked into his eyes, even before I was all the way here, and didn’t cry. He said he knew I was the smartest baby ever born and just got smarter and more beautiful as I got bigger. Every few years, out of nowhere, he’d say this same thing. This weekend, he told me how much I look like his mother, how beautiful and strong she was, how she drove into Mexico alone every year with food and clothes for people there, with a gun hidden in her purse.
I don’t think I have a novel in me. I don’t think I’m the most beautful woman anyone’s ever seen. I know I’m not the smartest human ever. But I know I’m special. I know I touch lives. I know I’m pleasing to look at. I know I have good things for people to hear. I help right now and into the future, into my clients’ lives and their family’s lives for years and years.
I’m special; Daddy says it, I believe it.
Afetr reading everyone else’s story, feel a little less special because of the shared experience. I was always told that i was special by my mom, and embraced this to the point where I became a misfit. This was not to say I was a troublemaker or was completely alienated, I just was never enough of one “type” of person to fit in completely anywhere.
Now, after a period of wandering from place to place, but staying in the same place, I’m rounding into living the white middle class suburbanite dream. House, great wife, 2 kids, dog, 2 cars, and stable job in a stable company, and generally happy with my lot.
I still want to be recognized for something though. Not sure what, and not rich or famous, just recognized.
I’ve always felt special, and I still do. Even when I try to take a step back and view myself objectively, I still think I’m special. I doubt that will ever change.
well, I’m 16 years old. The world is my oyster.
I have accepted that I’ll probably never be an olympic gymnast. And it’s very unlikely that I will ever be Chinese.
Other than that… there’s no reason I shouldn’t be special. I don’t feel like I’m more entitled to it than anyone else, but… hell, why not? There’s no reason I CAN’T change the world. I mean, somebody has to be special. Why not me?
That said, I have a guidance counselor who doesn’t understand limitations. She likes to get it into her head that I have these super crazy dreams that are not at all practical and that I can absolutely do it if I want. Like… I doubt very much that I will become a movie star or professional ballet dancer or that I’ll get a full ride to Harvard or that I’ll be president of the US without studying politics and I refuse to base my decisions in school and life around the notion that I will.
Growing up, people (parents, teachers, etc.) always treated me like I was something special. I wasn’t spoiled (not by a long shot!) but various opportunities were given to me, scholarship money was thrown my way, and so on, because people seemed to think I could really achieve something. On my side, I always felt like a fraud, terrible unworthy. I has been a huge relief to grow up and realize that I could be ordinary if I wanted to.
Oh, just wanted to add: my dogs make me feel pretty special!
I’m well into my 3rd decade and still feel, if not special, that I’m put together a bit differently than everyone else and have a different program running in my brain. I’m not sure if this makes me exceptional, or just a solipsistic lunatic.
My greatest fear is to die before I accomplish something truly great. Of course, I also believe that the rest of the world stops existing when I die, so it may be a moot point.
::gasp:: Blasphemy!
If you can dream it, you can achieve it.
It’s that guidance counselor. They always want to crap on your dreams!
Less and less as I get older. My job sometimes makes me feel special. I earn a nice living doing something I’m pretty good at without leaving the house. My body, OTOH, refuses to lose weight or get pregnant a second time in my mid-thirties and that makes me feel a lot less than special.
haha, I phrased it weirdly. It’s the exact opposite. She’ll pull me aside and be like, “Izzy, I think you should go to Juliard! they have an excellent dance school! You should dance with ABT! You should become president! I’ve heard you sing- you should become a rockstar! You should be Queen of France!”
and I’m like… “uh… I don’t think so. I was thinking of becoming a doctor…”
and then she’s like, “Nonsense! Why not?! You could be a dancer/president/rockstar/queen if you wanted to! Don’t sell yourself short!”
… at which point I take my giant file folder filled with applications and pamphlets for way-out-of-my-league schools and programs and back away slowly…
Hey, you can always try to “marry up”. 
Seriously though, while I think that the whole “you can be anything you want to” attitude is better than a defeatist one, the fact is that in many cases, that only works out if you figure out what you want to do early enough to actually do it, and have a plan in mind on how to get there. Just “wanting” to do it means nothing.
For example, you may have a desire to become the person who, say, helps to develop a cure for AIDS. But to achieve this, barring truly exceptional talent or circumstance, requires completing many math and science courses as part of a degree track that leads to a research medical position – and anyone who is really on that track will have finished AP courses in Chem, Bio and Calculus in High School.
Since you’re 16, you’d still have time to buckle down and hit the right books. But if your guidance counselor is also giving you the talk about “don’t worry about what you’ll major in”, “don’t choose your college/university by your intended major / what you think you’ll want to do for a job after graduating” (both being advice I got from my counselor as a high school student), you may be closing more doors than you’re opening for yourself down the road.
To bring up an old chestnut, if they really were so good at planning ahead for college and beyond, then how come they ended up as high school counselors? Was that really their plan all along, or did they finish college and then think, I guess I could do that and it wouldn’t be so bad? And is that how you want your life to end up after finishing school, a sort of let’s see where this ends up scenario? (The answer to that could legitimately be yes, but at least make sure it’s a conscious decision and not a default one!)
You gotta do what you love. I chatted with a guy today that said he works for a huge financial conglomerate (you know the kind where the CEO sends out emails). He was talking to me and another passerby that he works with numbers. He didn’t seem like he had any passion. No interest in the festival, the nice weather, or taking his kids to the movies. He doesn’t feel special. And neither does his kids, unfortunately.