I’m still knee deep in old stories and memories and trying to stay the course with this project. I find it easy to lose my focus and shelve things when other stuff looks more exciting and what I’m working on starts to feel like actual work.
(In an effort to keep my momentum and not let the blog be the excuse I use to jam out on Storyworth here is another short snippet).
Mean girls
Windsor is home to one of the meanest things I have ever done – it haunts me to this day.
I knew what it was like to be the outcast at school, I knew how lonely it was to eat lunch by yourself and how awful it felt to not have any confidence – you’d have thought I would have known better than to ridicule someone in the same shoes. And I did. But I did it anyway.
I had wiggled my way into a group of girls and was finally feeling like I was part of something. I had friends but I was still trying to figure out what constituted friendship and I was about to learn being allowed to hang around with people is not the same as belonging in the group.
High school in Ontario started at grade nine. Vincent Massey Secondary was enormous and pulled kids from several elementary schools in the area. Everyone was ‘new’ when they started high school and if they were lucky they got to leave their old persona back at the school from which they had come.
High school was a clean slate unless your insecurities followed you. Michael-Ann had the world by the tail – she didn’t give a rip what anyone thought of her and because of that everyone thought she was great. I, on the other hand, was desperate for people to like me.
I felt pretty special the day the girls sitting in the desks around me included me in their gossip session. I had nothing to add to their unflattering evaluation of one of the boys in our class but I laughed with them anyway and followed their gaze to where he was sitting. He looked directly at me as he blushed and I felt the hurt in his eyes to my bones.
I should have apologized but I didn’t. It didn’t take me long to realize I didn’t belong with those giddy girls – if being friends with them lumped me in with the mean girls I didn’t want in anymore. Unfortunately I’d already been initiated into the group as far as one kid was concerned and for that I’m still sorry.