Kid in the Middle

In fourth grade I waited every day to tell my teacher how many pages I'd read in my latest Boxcar Children book - just so I could move my "bookworm" (a laminated piece of construction paper) further around the room. My bookworm completed its cycle at about the same time I started valuing popularity over my interest in learning. I left elementary school a confident, somewhat outspoken girl, being slightly peeved about my popular friends' back stabbing. In middle school I became consumed with becoming one of them and gaining their approval.

Now I wonder why I changed, like so many other girls. I wonder why I abandoned best friends, felt torn about kicking girls off my lunch table, and worshiped the girls who called me "Can't-Stand-Ya" to my face. Because that's what middle school's about—climbing social ladders by aggressing other girls, being kicked down when you're not the cool one, and hesitating to take a step somewhere in the middle, unable to decide whether your reputation is more important than what you always used to know was right. We came to value popularity over what was right. We were afraid to stand for the things we really thought were priorities. We couldn't say we valued academics ("suck up"), family ("nerd"), or boy friends ("tomboy") because we'd be ridiculed. So we wanted to build on the one thing that we all wanted—friends—and were willing to let the end justify the means. We turned our large number of friends from support systems into collections and it was easy to push the less popular girl away if it meant raising the level of our popularity.

Sometimes I came home from school determined to change the way I was living. But no matter how many times my mother helped me realize that it was okay to get good grades, I always went back to my old train of thought. The pressure of middle school, day after day, chokes girls out of any new breath they want to breathe. The social scene that middle schoolers face every day is drowning them. It shouldn't be this way. I would like to think that adults and other role models could help girls (quietly at least) stand for what they believe in, what they know is right.

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The Target

Last winter I became the victim of relational aggression. One morning I awoke to find that my house had been "egged." There was a rumor started that I had gone out on a date with a senior boy that Friday, so his girlfriend decided that she would throw eggs at my house, as a pay-back. In fact, I had only been at dinner with my family. The girls egged our house two more times and in school, in the halls, I would hear them shout hurtful and embarrassing things to me.

One night at a basketball game they approached me, and verbally harassed me in front of everybody. I remember going home that night and crying to my parents. I felt like the entire school was against me. I was hurt, and I felt completely alone. I became more and more isolated as the harassment continued; I had never realized how vulnerable I was.

I did make it through the school year, but I had almost completely withdrawn from most school functions. This fall I transferred to another school.

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The Aggressor

In middle school all of my friends thought that it would be funny to stick gum on the outside of my locker. I didn't mind - it became sort of a joke, and soon, even my guy friends were participating. Then my friends and I noticed a "not-so-popular" girl sticking her wad of gum on my locker. I immediately became upset that this girl had the nerve to apply her gum to my locker. My friends and I decided that we would show her that it was certainly NOT okay!

The next day, we each chewed about 4 pieces of gum, and stuck the huge wad around her lock, so that she would not be able to get into her locker. She was very upset that we had done this, and went to the principal. We were called into the principal's office but we actually justified sticking gum on her lock, and got away with it.

For a while, we would sit next to her in class and make fun of her, putting her down every chance that we got. Eventually, we forgot about what had happened, and left her alone. We had probably found a new "victim."

It wasn't until two years later that I finally realized what I had done and apologized to her. Now I hate what I did to her.

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