I met my first mean girls in grade school. I didn't know that they were mean girls. I didn't actually know what that was. I mean, I had a brother who called me a 'butthole' behind my parents' back and occasionally punched me in the arm, but I wasn't really acquainted with anything meaner than that.

 I was lucky. Who knew?

Anyway, in fourth grade, the school I attended decided to separate the classes of students, all of whom had been together since first grade. It was done to "give us exposure to new friends and new learning experiences." You know, it was something done because the adults were bored. 

All my friends were separated and sent to different classes, and I ended up in a class with all the "popular" girls. (Popularity starts in first grade. Well, heck, now maybe it starts in kindergarten, in daycare, in the womb.) The popular girls were not separated because the majority of their very rich parents were on the school board and didn't allow that to happen. 

When I went to my parents, bless their hearts, and told them about my loneliness and worry, they told me to buck up!! That these girls were just people! I had so much personality!  (And now, how many parents tell their children that? ha. I look back on that sentence with great fondness and some wry amusement/horror. It always sounded like I kept a Big Bucket of extra Personality on hand.) They would like me, and if they didn't, they didn't deserve to be my friend.

They were right, of course, generally speaking but does that make it feel any better when someone rejects you, especially at the age of eight and nine? Alas, no. Acceptance is so greatly desired, especially because, it is my experience, among girls that age, they are starting to discover their place in the world and are finding out that much of society sees their self-worth in terms of what they look like. Brains are not as valuable as beautiful hair in a young girl. I hate that THAT is still true, pretty much. Come on, y'all. You know it is.

But I took my parents' advice. I made friends with the popular crowd. At first it was great. They called me funny; they loved my hair. We had slumber parties and put shaving creme in one girl's bra, listened to Peter Frampton (my lord.) and had a good time. Well, mostly. 

I mean, okay, well, there was that thing where they told me I shouldn't hang out with my old friends because they were ridiculous and lame. That was very uncomfortable. And there was that part where one of the things that they liked to do the most was to torment this poor girl who I can now pretty safely say must have been on the autism spectrum. She stayed by herself a lot, never really did anything in class but sit in the back and hum and rock, and she spent a lot of time with the school counselor and with the special ed section of the school. She was from a poor family and wore old sweaters with little tiny sweater 'pills' all over them. Her hair was rarely washed. Her face was already awash with tiny pimples.

My new friends like to throw their sandwich crusts at her at lunch and walk by her table and hold their noses as if she smelled bad. They tripped her on the playground.  They got the popular boys to help them. They would corner her on the playground and push at her while the girls all laughed. 

Where were the adults? Well, usually smoking off to the side or quietly eating, seeing it ALL and doing nothing. Rich parents. School board. Keeping their jobs.

It was kind of like a John Hughes' movie on mescaline.  Without Molly Ringwald dressed in goofy but cute clothes. No one poor and weird got the rich, sensitive boy.

At first, I tried to participate in these activities. I wanted so desperately to fit in. But I stopped sleeping at night. I had awful dreams I couldn't really remember in the morning. I spent a lot of time in the bathroom crying. I didn't really even understand it myself.

Finally, I refused to do it. One of the girls, the ringleader, would actually egg the other girls on to do these terrible things, while she herself sat back and did nothing. One day on the playground, she told me to walk by and spit on the girl. I got up, legs trembling, stomach churning. I looked over at the adults, smoking on the edge of the playground. At the popular girls, all laughing, their faces so innocent and happy and lovely. They were so beautiful looking. I walked by the girl. I stopped. She looked up, her face, already scarred by those little pimples, her hair lank. She was rolling one of those little pills on her sweater back and forth in her hand. I looked back. The girls were waiting. I gathered the spit together in my mouth. And then I just couldn't do it. I'd like to say I met her eyes, and we connected, but no, really, something in me, something put there by my parents or by some mysterious lesson I'd learned in kindergarten stopped me. Who the hell knows? I just said, "hey." She didn't even respond. And then I ran to the bathroom and hid there for the rest of the afternoon. When I returned to the classroom to get my books, the teacher didn't even ask where I'd been. 

When I came to class the next day, the popular girls wouldn't speak to me. They made faces at me. They passed notes. One girl screamed at me on the playground and pushed me. They started making fun of me. One of them spit on me. I spent a lot more time in the bathroom. 

At lunch, they pushed my tray off the table. They had the boys come up and take away my food or pick their noses and spread it on my tray. They pretended once to re-friend me, saying they forgave me, then took it back, laughing in my face when I cried.

I never told my parents. Never.

When I got to the next grade and from then on, it was different for me in terms of making friends. I went to school. I did the schoolwork and did well at it. I was friendly with everyone. I even made a couple of new friends and spent time with them. But I pulled back from being truly close with anyone, a habit I still cling to somewhat. This made me mysterious, evidently, and I had tons of friends but no one I wanted to really know well.

I did find that, outside school, there were wonderful things, like theatre and music and I made friends there too and really enjoyed myself. But at school, I was marking time. I was horrified at the idea of a high school reunion. Why would I want to go to that?

When I went to college, I thought I was done with it. No more mean girls. We were here to LEARN. (Oh my lord. I really believed that. Bless my heart.) In my second week, I made friends with this girl from one of my classes and she and her roommate asked me to come over for dinner and a movie. After the movie, we walked back to the dorms, the girls oddly excited about something. They kept telling me, "You're going to love this! It's hilarious!" They got popcorn and sat out on the lawn in front of the dorms where we could look into dorm room windows. I was slightly scandalized by this act, but thought maybe we were going to spy on some half-naked boy. I know. Terrible but hey, I see the male chest as a lovely thing.

Instead, they pointed to a window high up on the eighth floor. In it was a girl, on the top bunk of a bunkbed. The light framed her perfectly. I met her later. She had some serious mental problems. I'm not sure what, to tell you the truth. She didn't bathe much. She had a weird thing her face did, contorting slightly when she spoke. Her hands shook a little, and she sweated a lot. Not very appealing, right? She also hallucinated later in the term and thought someone was trying to kill her. The police had to come, and eventually, she had to leave school, heading straight for the hospital.

Anyway, the light framed her perfectly in the window. She was rocking, violently, back and forth, back and forth. Over and over. Like a little child. The girls next to me started laughing hysterically. They sat on the lawn, ate popcorn and watched her. And laughed and laughed.

I got this weird metallic taste in my mouth as I sat there, transfixed by the girl, rocking back and forth, her hair flying around her face. I didn't tell them to stop. I told them I had to leave early and get some sleep. I walked around the corner and threw up in the bushes.  Everything from grade school came back in this nasty rush. I went home and pushed it out of my mind. I tried never to think about it again. Not very noble of me, but there it is.

Later, I read the book by Cheryl Dellasega called Mean Girls Grown Up. And I recognized everyone in it, including myself.

I know now it never stops, no matter what my parents said about high school staying in high school.  I'd like to say I've found a set of friends who don't do that, don't like to insult or dissect other people for their pleasure. But, it's not true. I still have friends who spend their evenings at the bar making fun of some other girl's outfit and hair, who say bad things about each other behind each other's backs. I don't participate, but stop it? Impossible. They tell me "You are just too nice." That's a lie, as you must know. I am not nice. I am a hypocrite and a liar. I just don't get involved, whatever that means. 

I cannot ask for forgiveness of anyone. I never learned that little girl's name. I have blocked the name of the other girl from my memory or it's just gone, which is less dramatic. 

I look at my child. She is so beautiful. I know. I'm a mother. They all think that about their children. But, she is. And she has loads of personality. And I get ridiculously maudlin and dramatic and think, "Which will she be? The bully or the victim or the sideliner?" Then, I shake it off. She's herself. I dream of her rising above all of it and being the most well adjusted person on the planet. That movie "Parenthood" comes to mind.

I don't know. I saw that article about that poor little boy, dead at eleven. Bullying transcends gender and is still largely ignored evidently. 

I was lucky. I never wanted to kill myself, I confess. I just wanted those girls to go away. Just find erased them from the universe somehow. In my fantasies, aliens came and took them in the night or one morning, everyone woke up and they just didn't exist. But, that's pretty silly. 

I still don't sleep much at night. I've really moved on from those times when I was little. I'm fairly well-adjusted. But sometimes at night, I think of the girl's hair, flying, as she rocked back and forth. And I sit up and try to think of something else.