Mean Girls

Today someone at work found out I was a cheerleader in high school, and determined that I was a snotty, popular mean girl when I was a teenager.  Which made me laugh because I was much more like the out-of-place girl trying too hard to be a part of a group that didn't really want me.   Don't get me wrong, I had the core little group of best girl friends - Dorothy, Juli, Lori - but by no means was I popular.  And I definitely wasn't cool enough to be a "mean girl" because that would imply that I had any sort of power.  I'm pretty sure I had stonewashed jeans at one point.  So... yeah.

This conversation with my friend at work unleashed this memory I have from elementary school, proving that I was no "mean girl" but was instead terrorized by the "mean girls" - who exist even in grade school and who are possibly even worse at that age because somehow they manage to shape who you are for the rest of your school-age years. 

I'm not sure what grade I was in but it was young - maybe 3rd or 4th grade.  Recess still happened, so it was young.  I remember playing on one of those big metal ship things with a group of girls whose names I will not disclose but who to this day I feel bitter towards in completely irrational ways.  I don't know how it happened other than they needed no reason to gang up on the weak one of the group but they did it anyway - because that's what mean girls do their whole lives.  They pinpoint the weaker one and gang up, picking that person apart until they are left a sniveling and insecure shell of their former self.  And so, while I don't remember exactly what happened, I absolutely remember every one of these four girls pulling my hair and kicking me but mostly pulling my hair while I crouched on the ground crying and begging them to stop.  If it happened today they would probably take a video on their iPhone and post it to Facebook, after which I would find it online and sue them for brutality and win and then make a Lifetime movie about it to teach young girls about the dangers and injustices of bullying. 

Instead, they grew bored and left me laying there and when I recovered, I got back up and spent the majority of the rest of my school-age days trying to fit into the popular crowd with this group of back-stabbing bitches who never got nicer and only got meaner and uglier and more powerful.    Years later after it no longer mattered to me if I ever gained any of their approval, I saw one of them post on Facebook that she just hated high school because the memories were so painful for her, because everyone in school made her miserable, etc etc etc.  And I had to laugh because although I don't remember her being anything but pretty and desired by all the boys, she clearly had some issue that she can't get past either.  And I so badly wanted to reply to her post that she was beign ridiculous and she ruined my life by making my youngest grade school years miserable with her bullying, contributing in large part to the insecurities from which I would suffer for years and years to come.

And then I had to really really remind myself that I'm past all that and I'm a better person and all that.    And I'm still reminding myself, because every once in awhile I run into someone who thinks I was some popular cheerleader in school who had it all - some little rich girl who never wanted for anything - and I have to remember how much hard work it took to get to the point where I could stand up straight and look people in the eye and how long it took me to look myself in the mirror and see anything but pimples and glasses.   But the most important part is that now I can. 

And I hope, oh I hope, that there isn't some girl out there who is remembering me as her "mean girl" because I don't remember being mean, but maybe I was.   And if I was, I'm so sorry.