Mean Girls - nostalgia for my bad days
Just watched Mean Girls with teen drama queen Lindsay Lohan - who looked fantastic in that movie by the way. Post boob-job but pre-Paris Hilton influence. The last of her innocence. Because we're best friends.
Anyway, it reminded me of two completely awful mean things I did as a teenager, that were so bad I never actually wrote about. And, come to think about, never spoke about again after the fact. Well, here I go, admitting to the crimes...
In seventh grade, I had a tough year. I was forced to spend seven periods a day with the same 25 kids, none of whom I was particularly friendly with. Among the exclusive clique of popular girls and the larger bunch of nobodies, I was stuck somewhere in the middle. Toward the spring, however, I had sprung, and boys had started to notice me, which ultimately forced the girls to pay attention as well. The two things us girls did have in common were a hatred for our teacher, and a love for passing notes.
A big (sorry, HUGE) thing in seventh grade was to pass notes, and this bothered our teacher more than just about anything else. Now, I'm guessing when you teach middle school, you really have to pick your battles, and while some teachers forbade gum chewing, others insisted on alphabetical seating, ours chose to focus on note-passing. To each her own.
One day, I got it in my head to write an anonymous note, the subject of which would say really awful things about our teacher. I wish I could remember them only for the sake of feeling regret for it now. Well, somehow, I elected myself to do it. I guess I kind of knew that she would never suspect me. Even though I was a note passer I wasn't queen bee, and certainly was too smart to get caught. In fact, I wrote it at home with my left hand as to disguise the handwriting. I involved all the girls in our class and many of the guys - given the plot of Mean Girls it's a wonder no one turned against me and turned me in. I dropped it by her desk on the way to lunch, and I remember coming back to the classroom to see that she had been crying. I mean, I wrote some terrible things - bad enough that I blocked them out and still know that I should feel bad. I think there was some chatter about it, but nothing ever came of it, and frankly, I had forgotten all about it until I read a friend's inscription in my yearbook reminding me of it. I would apologize to her today if I ever had the chance. It was so dumb. But it secured my spot in the cool crowd for a while, which, at 13, was all that mattered.
The other mean thing I did was in 11th grade, and this was worse because I was deliberately terrible to people I really cared about. I had a clique of 6-8 friends in 11th grade - we called ourselves the Monkees because of a Karaoke night. The first half of the year I loved them - by the second half, I thought one of them was a total bitch. Before she had been friends with my group, she and another one of our friends had been friends with a different crowd, who they had since ditched and done something really mean to. Well, of course, our new friends told us all about the mean something they did to this other girl (I can't for the life of me remember what it was) and I'm sure we gossipped about it endlessly. At the point in the year when we were fed up with them, my friend Shannon, who was a total bitch and probably still is, hatched a plan to snitch on our new friends to the Vice Principal. Shannon convinced me, which wasn't too difficult because I always liked Shannon, to go to the VP and tell him this awful thing that had happened like two years before. Our two friends got suspended, and that effectively ended our friendship junior year. I hated myself for the rest of the year and long after.
The funny thing is, we all got over it. They both kind of brushed it off by the end of senior year, and my guilt quickly ended any annoyance I felt at the bitchiness. We still had other friends in common, and hating each other was just more work than any of us felt like exerting senior year. We all read a poem together for our HS video yearbook. Stayed in touch through college and beyond. I've been to one of their weddings and all of their post-college apartments. Shannon lives in VT but I don't talk to her. Shortly after she decided to turn on our friends, she turned against me. And while I have seen her and hung out with her many times since HS, we never picked up our friendship where we left off. Too bad too. I always did like her. She was the ultimate Mean Girl.
Anyway, it reminded me of two completely awful mean things I did as a teenager, that were so bad I never actually wrote about. And, come to think about, never spoke about again after the fact. Well, here I go, admitting to the crimes...
In seventh grade, I had a tough year. I was forced to spend seven periods a day with the same 25 kids, none of whom I was particularly friendly with. Among the exclusive clique of popular girls and the larger bunch of nobodies, I was stuck somewhere in the middle. Toward the spring, however, I had sprung, and boys had started to notice me, which ultimately forced the girls to pay attention as well. The two things us girls did have in common were a hatred for our teacher, and a love for passing notes.
A big (sorry, HUGE) thing in seventh grade was to pass notes, and this bothered our teacher more than just about anything else. Now, I'm guessing when you teach middle school, you really have to pick your battles, and while some teachers forbade gum chewing, others insisted on alphabetical seating, ours chose to focus on note-passing. To each her own.
One day, I got it in my head to write an anonymous note, the subject of which would say really awful things about our teacher. I wish I could remember them only for the sake of feeling regret for it now. Well, somehow, I elected myself to do it. I guess I kind of knew that she would never suspect me. Even though I was a note passer I wasn't queen bee, and certainly was too smart to get caught. In fact, I wrote it at home with my left hand as to disguise the handwriting. I involved all the girls in our class and many of the guys - given the plot of Mean Girls it's a wonder no one turned against me and turned me in. I dropped it by her desk on the way to lunch, and I remember coming back to the classroom to see that she had been crying. I mean, I wrote some terrible things - bad enough that I blocked them out and still know that I should feel bad. I think there was some chatter about it, but nothing ever came of it, and frankly, I had forgotten all about it until I read a friend's inscription in my yearbook reminding me of it. I would apologize to her today if I ever had the chance. It was so dumb. But it secured my spot in the cool crowd for a while, which, at 13, was all that mattered.
The other mean thing I did was in 11th grade, and this was worse because I was deliberately terrible to people I really cared about. I had a clique of 6-8 friends in 11th grade - we called ourselves the Monkees because of a Karaoke night. The first half of the year I loved them - by the second half, I thought one of them was a total bitch. Before she had been friends with my group, she and another one of our friends had been friends with a different crowd, who they had since ditched and done something really mean to. Well, of course, our new friends told us all about the mean something they did to this other girl (I can't for the life of me remember what it was) and I'm sure we gossipped about it endlessly. At the point in the year when we were fed up with them, my friend Shannon, who was a total bitch and probably still is, hatched a plan to snitch on our new friends to the Vice Principal. Shannon convinced me, which wasn't too difficult because I always liked Shannon, to go to the VP and tell him this awful thing that had happened like two years before. Our two friends got suspended, and that effectively ended our friendship junior year. I hated myself for the rest of the year and long after.
The funny thing is, we all got over it. They both kind of brushed it off by the end of senior year, and my guilt quickly ended any annoyance I felt at the bitchiness. We still had other friends in common, and hating each other was just more work than any of us felt like exerting senior year. We all read a poem together for our HS video yearbook. Stayed in touch through college and beyond. I've been to one of their weddings and all of their post-college apartments. Shannon lives in VT but I don't talk to her. Shortly after she decided to turn on our friends, she turned against me. And while I have seen her and hung out with her many times since HS, we never picked up our friendship where we left off. Too bad too. I always did like her. She was the ultimate Mean Girl.
Labels: New York
posted by Lori @ 6:55 PM
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