Helga Pataki would be roughly 28 years old today.

I hope future Helga is happy. I hope she's accomplished and confident and a badass power woman. I hope she's in love. I hope she laughs. I hope she has friends. Mostly, I hope for Helga everything I hope for myself. Because Helga was me. And you. Helga was all of us.

Helga was every preteen girl who felt awkward and sidelined. She had bad hair that would never lie flat. She had spunk but came off as standoffish and mean because she couldn't express it. She was sarcastic and smart and made to feel ashamed of it. She was in love with a nerdy boy and didn't know how to say it. She had a unibrow.

Of course, I didn't actually identify with Helga when I was in the Hey Arnold-watching demographic: It was too painful to see a version of myself reflected back like that. (It's kind of also how I felt about watching Girls, to be honest. If you're living it, do you need to watch it on a screen?) It's only now, looking back, that I realize that Helga was a stand-in for so many female tween ailments.

In a particularly poignant episode called "Helga's Makeover," Helga is sad that her so-called friends haven't invited her to their slumber party. She's not one of the boys (they're having their own boys-only ball game), but she's no girly-girl either.