Bullying

All this media about bullying kinda gets to me. I hope things improve for these kids. I really hope that my daughter never has to deal with bullying. I was teased like you wouldn't believe. I was always 'the fat kid'. I remember walking by a girl in middle school mumbling "heffer, heffer" under her breath, and a full bus of trailer park kids chanting "Mary Hanna lose some weight..." No kid should ever have to deal with that. Needless to say, my self esteem was not so great. Middle schoolers can be awful. The funniest thing to me is later in high school, some of these people actually grew up and became relatively nice. I'll never forget after returning from a competition event (my only extra curricular activity and it was through the tech center, not the high school), I walked over to my car and lit a cigarette. A group of these girls that had previously been absolute bitches to me invited me over to smoke with them. I had lost 50-60 pounds junior/senior year and was more confident and by that point couldn't care less what they thought. It was nice to not be the outsider anymore, though.

For what it's worth, the two girls I remember having the most problems with way back when are actually on my Facebook friends. That's why I've bit my tongue so many times when I see something posted about bullying. One of them has actually said that her kid is having trouble with bullys. No matter how horrible she was back then, I feel bad that her kid has to deal with anything like that. But, I can't help thinking that it's Karma working in some way. In no way was it just these two girls, they're just the two that stand out most in my memory. The second of these two found God and as far as I know, they both became decent human beings. It's not like I'm really holding a grudge, it's just not something that's easily forgotten.

Another part of this story is a class I was forced to take in 8th grade. "Skills for Adolescence"... Um yeah, that was the biggest effing joke. I think I got a 'C' (I was a straight 'A' student). We all had to take this class - I looked at it like group therapy. I was supposed to open up to a class of kids that were straight up evil to me? Um, I don't think so. We were asked what the one thing was that we'd change about ourselves. Well, obviously, I'd lose weight. I said I had big feet.