Of all the horrible people who I’ve met in my life, those who take the cake for being the worst are the girls I hated in high school. Yes, I actually hate them more than shitty customers, but only because they were unavoidable and working in customer service is a choice, not a necessity. Everyone knows versions of these girls: they’re cruel, petty, meddlesome, and all for no explicable reason. Unlike in real life, the girls who tormented us in high school couldn’t be avoided; they were in your classes, they were lurking in the hallways whispering nasty rumors, and short of asking your parents to transfer you to a different prison, you were SOL.
Clarence Darrow said, “The world is made up for the most part of morons and natural tyrants, sure of themselves, strong in their own opinions, never doubting anything,” and it is my belief that he was talking about the Queen Bees from high school. These girls seem to think they have this right because they’re part of the “popular crowd” or are deemed to be prettier than most. They believe that their opinions and deeds are infallible, even though they’re really just children, and that anyone who’s different from them should be punished. What I found during my time in high school is that most of these girls acted out of one personality trait: insecurity. They feel the need to put down others because they are in fact insecure about their own abilities and figure that the easiest way to be on the top is taking down someone else. Allow me to let you in on a little secret: the two key factors in life that the popular girls figure they have, they actually don’t. Having a brain, and being able to use it is something that the majority of popular girls lack; they may pass their classes, but they are by no way in the top of their class. That place was taken by me, and the other nerds in my school! The key factor to their success in high school was often looks, but the looks that got them elected most popular in high school will fade with time, and the rest of us “ugly girls” will learn to work our looks as we grow up. And seriously, looks aren’t everything girls; being a good person is much more important.
Avoiding them doesn’t really work in high school, since you’ll eventually run into them, so how should we deal with them? Should we take the matter to our parents or the school authorities, as anti-bullying studies have shown we should, or should we confront the problem person, as our inner badass counsels? The solution is never clear, since every bully has their own weak point, so instead of giving you a fix-all solution that doesn’t exist, I’ll share the stories of three bullies who I had to deal with in high school. All names have been omitted for personal safety, but anyone who knows anything my high school experience knows exactly who these bitches are.
The first girl, is one who I’ve known literally since I was born. Technically she’s a week or so older than me, but our parents were good friends, and they went through the baby-days together. We went to each other’s childhood birthday parties, and had many a play date, but as we grew up we stopped being friends. There was no falling out between us, we just didn’t have anything in common anymore and when our parents stopped arranging our meetings that was the end. When I went back to public school in grade 8 after 4 years of home schooling (shut up shut up shut up!) my mother informed me that this girl would be attending the same high school. I wasn’t that interested in being BFFs, but I figured we would at least be nice to each other if only for the sake of our parents. For the first year of school we pretty much ignored each other, but in grade 9 the problems began. We were assigned lockers side by side (our last names were beside each other alphabetically in class), so running into each other was inevitable. This wouldn’t have been a problem, if she and her boyfriend hadn’t spent all their time hanging out in front of her locker, and therefore mine as well. It became a hassle to get into my locker, since one or the other would always be standing in front of it, and even though they were well aware of the fact that it was MY locker, they wouldn’t move unless asked. For the entire year I put up with their stupid game, until the last week of school. I had had enough of their petty behavior. Instead of asking them to move, I shouldered my way past them, into the space that was rightfully mine, jostling the girl in question, who happened to be drinking a can of Coke. She immediately piped up “OMG you could have spilled my drink!” to which she received a glare and the remark “I had to get to my locker and you were in the way, just like you have been EVERY SINGLE DAY THIS YEAR!” Her childish response, was a lengthy pause (I presume from the shock that this little nerdy girl was actually speaking up for herself), and then she promptly threw her can of Coke at me. I stood there dripping for about two seconds, seething in anger, and then proceeded to turn and walk away, after another of my trademark death glares. She may have dumped her drink on me, and I was sticky until I got home, but from that day on she moved out of the way when she saw me heading for my locker. I didn’t have to say anything to her about the pop-throwing incident; my silence spoke volumes, and is what it took to stop her behavior towards me. I’m sure the death glare helped as well :p
The second girl is one who most people in our high school can speak nothing but praises of anymore, and later on I’ll tell you why, but first I’ll explain why she and I did not see eye to eye. She was a new girl in our school in grade 10, and being in the same science class we were actually pretty good friends. We didn’t sit together, but we used to hang out at break time. But one day she decided that she didn’t like me anymore (I still don’t know what her reasoning was), and she walked up to me and informed me of such. This break in our friendship was completely unexpected, so I was obviously shocked. But I moved on, as I had other friends, and wasn’t going to waste my time stressing about her. We didn’t have many big fallouts during our time in classes together, but every once and a while she would pop up (usually in our mutual art class), and get in my face. Usually this bullying took the form on criticizing my art projects, so I didn’t take it too seriously, and told her off since I had no doubts about my artistic abilities. The real problem was when she decided to have it out with my best friend. Thankfully I wasn’t there for this fight, but this girl threatened my best friend’s life. I don’t remember if my BFF ever went to the principle with this information (a death threat IS a pretty big deal), but we made it a point to avoid her at all costs, and we were pretty successful in avoiding any future conflicts. What we found out after high school (being the naïve high schoolers that we were), was that during most of her later years in high school (ie when she went a bit crazy) she was on drugs. And I don’t mean pot, because that’s not generally a violence-inducing drug, and most of our high school was also partaking in the Mary-J fad. I’ll never be sure what exactly she was on, but there were rumours of Meth, and Extasy was also very popular at the time with the rave crowd in Kamloops. During my first year at our local college, I got to class one day, and one of my friends informed me that a great tragedy had occurred: this girl had died the night before. I was initially shocked, until I found out that her death had been because she was involved in a high-speed car chase with the police, and she was under the influence of a drug binge. When my friend informed me of the details he was quite offended to realize that not only was I no longer shocked, I actually cared very little. The words that I remember uttering at the time were along the lines of “Good. She wasn’t a good person, and I don’t really care that she’s dead.” For me, her death didn’t cleanse her of her social sins, and her lifestyle (which was her own choice) was the cause of her death. Just because someone is dead doesn’t mean that the way they hurt people in the past is to be forgiven; it just means that they can’t hurt anyone anymore.
The third person who I will speak about, is someone who I was very close with during all of highschool. She was the first person to talk to me on the first day of grade 8, and she was my best friend through it all. Yet, once I escaped highschool, moved into the real world, and gained some self-confidence, I realized that she was the person who bullied me the worst. From the first week in grade 8, she was already putting me down; she literally told me to “stop following her around like a puppy dog” even though she knew I didn’t have a lot of friends except for her. That conversation pretty much established how our relationship would be defined until gradutation. She was the leader of the pack, and I was just there to be her little sidekick. Occasionally I would go against her wishes, and this usually ended up in us having a huge fight, in which we wouldn’t talk to eachother for a few weeks. Usually it was me who had to make the first move so that we could talk it out and be friends again. Our group of friends was also defined by who she was friends with, which wasn’t really a huge problem for me, except when her love life came between our friendship. Whenever she was dating a guy (there were 3 big ones in highschool), they became her whole life, and I took second seat. Even then, I still considered myself an important person (at least to my friends), so it was extremely insulting to suddenly have her choose her new boyfriend over her best friend. It’s one thing to date a guy who your BFF doesn’t like (and trust me I didn’t like any of the guys she dated), but it’s another to completely ditch them. They’re your best friends, and if you treat them this way, then they won’t be there for you when you inevitably break up with the flavour of the week. Not being an overly social person in highschool, I didn’t date at all, so I didn’t really understand why she put so much emphasis on her relationships with guys, but even now that I’ve had my own experiences with the opposite sex, I still don’t think that her behavior was exucsable. In every relationship I’ve ever been in I’ve made sure to keep up my relationships with my true soulmates, my girlfriends, since they’ve been in my life longer, and will continue to be a part of my life regardless of what happens. Along with breaking the number one friendship rule, this girl was also the biggest snob that I’ve ever met. Just because her family was uptown and lived in a carefully manicured home, and my family was downtown and had too many large dogs, she felt that she was better than me in every conceivable way. She felt that she was smarter, prettier, and had better fashion sense. Sorry my dear, but our report cards tell another story, and unlike you, I never really had to try to get my awesome grades. I will admit that at the time she was “prettier” than I was, and that she knew how to shop, but time has told who the real winner is on that front. I have more shoes, and a better wardrobe than she could ever dream of, my straightened hair doesn’t look fried, and I don’t have to work around a hawk-shaped nose and poor complexion. Last time this girl was spotted in our hometown by one of my little spies, she has straggly, greasy looking waist-length hair, a shiney face with not even the bare make-up minimums, and she was dressed like a sloppy hippy. Last time I ran into her family I was wearing a fabulous form-fitting striped dress, with flawless make-up and hair, and to top it all off, 4-inch cream Guess pumps. Oh and did I mention that she’s dating a guy who’s 25 years older than we are? I may be single, but at least I’m not dating someone old enough to be my father. I think we all know who won this little contest!
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