One of my favorite guilty pleasures, a teen drama, induced a very different type of guilt last night. The episode depicted a Columbine type situation. It was pretty well done and brought up lots of old memories for me.
The topic of kids being ostracized at school is always a popular one. I’ve had countless discussions with friends and family about how we were all treated in school, how we were accepted or made to feel like losers. People never get over their experiences. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve talked with people about how their self esteem growing up was determined, even demolished, by the way their peers treated them in school.
And it only gets worse! Incidents with kids committing suicide, bringing guns to school to harm others, suing the administrations that allow them to be harassed and sometimes brutalized: these things keep happening, to the point that they’re not even considered worthy of being reported in the papers or on t.v. anymore.
Why aren’t teachers and administrators doing more? Why aren’t there sensitivity classes or something? Why aren’t there more discussion groups and time with guidance counselors? Why aren’t there BETTER guidance counselors???
Is it because teachers and administrators are too scared of their kids? Is it because they think it’s the parents’ job to teach their kids respect for others and how to tolerate those different from them? Clearly parents aren’t doing the job. And even those who do, can’t be there to watch their kids every minute.
Too many kids are made to feel ugly, stupid, abnormal and unworthy of friendship, love and attention. Too many kids turn to drugs, alcohol, violence and other self-destructive behaviors because they can’t achieve the one goal they strive so hard to achieve: fitting in.
I was one of those kids, and thankfully I got through it in one piece. I don’t feel sorry for myself, and I don’t expect others too either—my story isn’t so bad. But knowing what I do now, I wish there was something I could do to make the system better, so kids wouldn’t have to go through what I went through, let alone far worse treatment.
The public grade schools in the town I grew up in weren’t the best. I lucked out in 2nd grade with an awesome teacher. But in 3rd grade I wasn’t so lucky. I started getting bored, not paying attention, and getting poor grades. The administration called my mom in and said that I should be put in a slower class or held back because I did so poorly on standardized tests. They even retested me, putting me alone in a room to take the tests, away from other kids and “distractions.” I spent most of the time allotted to me practicing my ballet steps.
“Wait a minute,” my mother said, “let me see these tests.” Sure enough I had gotten all of the questions I answered correct, but didn’t finish, stopping less than half way through. The administrators failed to notice this, having only looked at my scores. It’s easy to make mistakes when you have so many kids to look after.
I was accepted to a nearby private school with a generous scholarship, since I was bright and my parents were broke. Well, not broke, but definitely not well off. I was very excited. I had met many of the teachers during my interviews and they were all quite nice and much more interesting than my 3rd grade teacher. I also knew one girl in my class through other friends. Her name was Laurie and we got along famously. Of course Laurie failed to mention to me, upon hearing I’d be attending her school, that she was very unpopular. This was fourth grade mind you; social hierarchy was in full swing. So, being associated with her, added to the fact that I was mildly hyperactive, didn’t wear clothes from Polo or Laura Ashley, took ballet, had parents who shared a Honda civic and ran a theatre, I was immediately labeled a “spaz” and a “loser.”
The girls in my class would run their fingers over their pearl necklaces (yes, they wore real pearls in FOURTH grade), and sweep their eyes up and down my form, taking in my favorite sweater—slightly tattered pink with multi-colored puppies on it—my purple corduroy skirt and white tights and then roll their eyes, laugh and stalk away. They would examine their perfectly manicured nails and the three or four gold bracelets and rings they wore, glance at my bare hands and whisper to each other.
“Why do you wear clothes like that?” a boy asked during my first few days at the new school, looking at me as if I was wearing a dress made of dog shit.
“Um… uh…” I stammered, confused by the question but trying to think fast. “My grandmother makes me.”
My grandmother. The woman who loved me more than anything else in her world, who doted on me, spoiled me, gave me everything I wanted, including the clothes I wore and had once found adorable. I was blaming her for the very gifts she gave me, because some little prick didn’t think they were good enough.
I cried myself to sleep every night. My parents tried to console me; my mother told me I was a great kid and that it was probably just a matter of time until the others warmed up to me. She even offered to lend me what little good jewelry she had, to wear to school. I agonized over what to wear each day, and was perpetually late to first period.
After a couple of months, my home room teacher announced that we would be changing our seating arrangement and asked us to write down on pieces of paper our top three choices for who we wanted to sit next to. After reviewing everyone’s selections, he pulled me aside and asked me if I was really trying to make new friends; only Laurie had put me down on her list. Although there were only about 20 kids in my whole class, his words made me feel as if the entire planet had rejected me. I lied and said I didn’t care, so he seated Laurie and I together and the rest of the girls in another clump nearby. It was horrible.
Laurie’s mom was so upset that Laurie wasn’t popular, she blamed it on her age and held her back to repeat fourth grade… at another school. Suddenly I was totally alone. The girls continued to put me down and the boys were getting worse. My grandmother said to ignore them, “Usually when boys tease girls it’s their way of hiding the fact that they really LIKE them!” This made me feel a bit better, and for a while, I successfully ignored the boys. But one day, the tallest, best looking boy in my class was really letting me have it. He laughed and yelled about the way I looked, the way I talked, even the way I was polite to my teachers. I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“You know,” I said haughtily, “my grandmother says when a boy teases a girl this much, it means he likes her.” The huge grin on his face was replaced by shock and then disgust. He walked slowly over to me, looked down into my pale face, and said softly, “I wouldn’t like you if you were the last DOG on earth.” I felt his breath on my face turning me red and knew by the cackles from his friends that he hadn’t spoken too quietly for them to hear him.
Before any of us girls had blemishes, the boys started talking about them. No doubt educated by their older siblings (who had already taught a few of them to drink and smoke cigarettes), they began supposing who would have the biggest craters and the most blackheads. The first time I got the smallest red spot, one boy told me he “couldn’t wait to suck the pus out of [my] zits.”
A few more scholarship students transferred in and I latched onto them immediately, so I didn’t feel so alone, and I got the leads in a few school plays and recitals, so my “theatre geek” status increased. Fortunately I got so much praise from teachers and parents for my talent, it became the one thing the kids couldn’t make fun of me for, so I embraced it and somehow graduated 8th grade in tact.
High school was also private, and all girls, but no less grueling. There were the same snotty faces and shirts with little horses on the front looking me up and down and then smirking smugly. Again I found a few friends among the theatre geeks, the misfits, those without perfect hair or perfect figures. When I finally went through puberty and got real acne, I could hear the voices of those 7th grade boys ringing in my ears. I started to wear thick, ugly concealer, which just made my skin worse, but I figured it was better for people to be whispering that I wore too much make-up than that I was a “pizza face.” More than once I’d walk in on a conversation where girls were making fun of my outfits, which again I’d picked out myself and thought were cute…
Once, a girl unlike almost any other in her class transferred from a different school. Initially ridiculed for her style and wardrobe, she made my other classmates laugh at my expense; she would lock me out of classrooms, imitate my high-pitched voice, and joke about beating me up. The popular girls found this so funny that they accepted her into their clique and within no time she had ditched her old look for something much more preppy.
Later my friend “L” told me she had a crush on a classmate, “T”. She wrote a letter to T, saying she thought she was beautiful and wished she could kiss her. T took the letter to the guidance counselor and told everyone it made her very uncomfortable. Said guidance counselor brought L into her office for over an hour and when L came out, she was crying. News spread all over the school and by the end of the day I was one of only 4 girls who wasn’t avoiding L like the plague.
Another of my friends who was a brilliant artist and poet, but not what the popular kids deemed worthy, was contemplating suicide because shyness and self-loathing was becoming unbearable.
I heard whispers in the hall about girls as young as 13 having sex and doing cocaine. I’d barely had my first kiss.
When I got to college I was completely naïve, inexperienced with boys and alcohol and hadn’t had a class larger than 30 kids in my entire life. I was overwhelmed by how many students there were… and there were less than 2,000. I wanted to impress everyone to the point that every girl would want to be my friend and every boy would want to date me. What’s that expression? You can’t please everyone? They should amend it to be:
You can’t please everyone, and if you try, everyone will hate you.
I tried so hard to make everyone like me that very few did. Half way through the year I found a character sketch my roommate had written about me. It described in detail the way everyone would mock me the minute I left a room. How I was so obviously trying to fit in that I would change my opinion to fit that of whomever I was with, and that basically the only people who were nice to me, did so out of pity.
I walked around numb and silent for about 2 days after reading this… and then proceeded to trash myself. I drank every night until I passed out. Being numb and intoxicated is certainly an interesting change when you’ve been hypersensitive to being stared at and called names for so long.
As down on myself as I was, as reckless as I became, I lived through it and I’m truly thankful for that. I was very lucky, and after a short time, I woke up and realized that my life was worth more than what I was doing to my body. I realized that I was throwing away my health and my talent, and that while some people didn’t like me and tried to make my life miserable, there were a few others that loved me and didn’t judge me for my wardrobe or my insecurities. I realized that I was giving too much power to assholes that I shouldn’t care less about. I woke up. Thankfully.
And when I finally stopped caring who I impressed, when I finally grew some courage and started seeing that there were some things in me I could be proud of, when I finally started telling the bitches who put me down to fuck off, I finally started feeling good about myself. And with this confidence came something I had wished for, for so long: some popularity. Yes, for a brief time, when I finally stopped trying to be one, I became one of the “cool kids.” …and I didn’t know how to handle it. Initially I even became what I had once feared and loathed more than anything, brandishing what little “power” I had and using it to make others feel bad... and it made me sick. So I apologized to the few people I had hurt and made amends. I also tried to make up for it by helping other new kids and freshman adjust and feel good about themselves.
The point is, my story isn’t so bad- I turned out fine. But there are thousands of kids all over this country who went through what I did and worse. And through it all, teachers did nothing. Many still do; they turn a blind eye and say things like, “boys will be boys” or “kids can be so cruel,” and then sigh and change the subject.
Nothing really has changed in hundreds of years—kids are still brutally affected by the way they are treated by their peers. And while some get through it to become happy, productive adults, others o.d. on drugs, become prostitutes, drink themselves to death, terrorize other kids, and bring guns to school to shoot themselves or others.
It needs to stop. And until “the powers that be” do something to improve the situation, maybe some of us can help, just a little bit, by sharing our stories, so that kids going through it now know that at least they’re not the only one… at least they’re not alone…
or maybe I'm just kidding myself.
