Bullies

Out of the blue the other day, I thought about a girl who went to my middle school. I still remember what Jennifer (not her real name) looked like: pretty, always nicely dressed, hair pulled back neatly with a hairband that matched her outfit of the day. A popular girl, you would think from this description. But she was far from it. She was a juvenile diabetic, and she needed to constantly graze to keep her blood sugar steady. And that was enough of a freak factor to completely ostracize her from rest of the class. Kids are jerks.

In class, she would open her neatly-packed lunch box and and start snacking on her fruit and juice box. Whispers and sneers would promptly ensue in the otherwise no drinks/no food classroom: “Look at what she brought today!” “Oh, she’s so weird.” “She’s going to get as big as a house if she keeps eating like that every day!” While I never paid much heed to this (I was flying more than a few freak flags of my own),  I never bothered reaching out to her either. To her credit, the teasing never seemed to bother her much. She came to school each day, head held up high, ignoring the jeering remarks. In fact, she always seemed a bit aloof to me, but I’m sure her parents had taught her well: “Don’t worry about what the other kids say. Just ignore them; you just need to remember how special you really are.”

As a mom to a little girl, I can imagine how angry and helpless her parents must have felt knowing that their daughter was ostracized, and for a reason related to a congenial medical condition to boot. I imagine how I would react if EB, God forbid, ever has to live with a life-long medical condition and is ostracized because of it. It would so enrage me that I would want to confront (read: kick their asses) each and every one of these kids and their parents.

For days, I wondered how Jennifer is doing. I finally gave into my stalking impulses and looked her up on Facebook. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I suppose I wanted to see that she is now happy, her middle school experience a dim, distant memory. Her profile popped up right away, and there she was, a photo of her with a person I’m sure is her husband and her child, looking all smiley. I felt better, even relieved; I'm not sure why. And this made me think -- jeez, I wonder if someone else out there remembers me as the ostracized class freak and is pitying/thinking of me in the same way right now!

There’s been a lot of press about school bullying, but I really don’t think it’s gotten any worse in the past 30 years. Kids are cruel, plain and simple. Girls can be especially mean and nasty little bitches. I think what got me so bothered about Jennifer’s case is that we were all around 11 or 12 years old--old enough so that we should’ve known better. It’s one thing for kids to be clueless at the age of 7 or 8, but by the time you hit middle school, it’s inexcusable. But ironically, that’s also when the kids go through their meanest, nastiest streaks. I am bracing myself for when EB starts to go through that stage.