First and Last Time
It’s funny, but even now, I can remember encounters with “mean girls” from decades ago.
When I was in 7th grade at McPherson Jr. High, I recall encountering my first viscerally mean girls. I was a natural target, a pre-menstrual late bloomer, flat as a surf board, with limp dirty hair and only occasionally brushed teeth. Yes, I was a clueless mess, so I had my share of less than inviting encounters, but nothing like Anita endured.
Anita was overweight with mousy brown hair and few other memorable features. She was in my P.E. class which every day terminated with compulsory gang showers so that no one went to the next class sweaty and smelly. Whether you were boney and flat or roly-poly soft, you were exposed and vulnerable.
In the class was a trio led by a particularly cruel girl whose name I have forgotten. She was a pint-sized, blue-eyed, ponytailed blonde with the demeanor of a barracuda on the attack.
When choosing sports teams, I was generally toward the end because I simply was not a stellar player. But Anita was always last to be chosen. She became the trio’s primary target. Come spring, there were auditions for the annual school musical, “Carousel,” in which the little barracuda had landed some role. She whisked into the locker room singing “June is Busting Out All Over,” but then she switched out the words to “Anita’s Busting Out All Over!”
Every day the trio relentlessly serenaded Anita. Did I try to defend her, or was it only in my mind? Was I too afraid to speak up? Mercifully, I cannot remember. It was so heart-breaking that I was relieved to be moving away at the end of the school year from such a harsh society. I left California for Rhode Island, believing that the meanest girls in the world ran the whole state.
The culture in Newport, Rhode Island was raucous but innately kinder. As an 8th grader I was shy, withdrawn, and largely miserable. I felt like a total misfit and had only a handful of friends who felt as uncomfortable as I did. I wasn’t taunted, but I didn’t feel included. I didn’t learn until year’s end that I was largely responsible for that, that I had to make the effort to invite others into my life instead of sadly waiting on the outside for them to invite me into theirs.
So, the summer before 9th grade I laid out an agenda for myself to trade a life of lonely self-pity for one of joy and friendships. I did a complete self-make-over, including paying attention to my personal grooming and style. I wasn’t ugly, and I was starting to look like an animated human being.
But, I made a mistake.
I’d bonded with Pammy in the 8th grade. We were both socially awkward, but Pammy could be downright embarrassing at times. While I was working on my self-improvement plan, Pammy was, well, continuing to be Pammy.
We were living in base housing provided for the officers’ families connected with the Naval War College. Pammy and I were both children of faculty members, meaning we were stationed there for several years, while the families of the War College students (also ranking officers) were there for only 10 months. The result was an influx of new kids each school year. And that year, I was not going to be a shrinking violet.
Deb was one of the new girls to be in our grade. She was self-possessed to the point of being brash, an anomaly for military kids who having been regularly jerked from place to place are often on the shy side. I was so anxious to make a new friend who was not turned painfully inward that I found myself mirroring Deb’s behavior. In confidence, I made a snarky remark about Pammy. I didn’t realize that barracudas do not waste ammunition, and they hold nothing in confidence. It took less than a day for her to go to Pammy and tell her how her “friend” had betrayed her.
You know how this story trends. Pammy was crushed, our friendship was destroyed, and she became the most vengeful member of Deb’s nasty little clan. I have to allow that the other girls gravitating to Deb were not actually toxic people, simply innocents looking to belong somewhere, almost anywhere. But, as someone who had thrown her friend under the bus, I was their unifying target.
Although this was not a happy episode, the story is not as dark as it might have been. You see, I’d already begun to make good and lasting friends among the townies who did not see me as this dark and sinister mean girl, even though I had committed an undeniably mean act. Despite having to be wary of that small pack of girls who rode the school bus with me, I had wonderful friends at school, and even began dating that Fall. Not one of the mean girls was ever asked on a date, I guess because boys recognized “mean,” and out of self-preservation, wanted no part of it. And despite always feeling guilty about Pammy, that 9th grade year became the best year of my life, thus far.
All of those girls would be gone at the school year’s end, including Pammy, and a whole new crop would be moving in. I would never again poison the waters I swam in. I’d found that in order to look up to a barracuda, you first had to slither down into the slime at the very bottom.
I’m so sorry, Pammy!