Mean Girls

I've run across a couple of really good blog posts lately. Here and Here. Maybe you should read them before you read my post so you don't think I'm completely random.

Girls are so mean. Are boys mean to eachother like that? I think maybe boys just beat eachother up. Girls fight their battles with sharp tongues.

Maybe you were lucky enough to never fall prey to a mean girl. Maybe you were a mean girl. I didn't fall into either of those categories, and ironically enough, the worst place of all for me to be was church.

I grew up in a pretty big church--a big church where all of the popular kids went and I just happened to attend because my parents had been going there since I was two. I guess the church was big enough that they split my grades' Sunday school class into two groups, based on birth date. Unfortunately, that put me in a group with just two other girls and a bunch of boys. The boys were OK. The girls were Kerri and Nicole (and that will be enough info. for those of you from home to know how the rest of this tale is going to go...they have quite a reputation).

Every week, they must have racked their brains to figure out some new way to insult me. I guess I should give them creativity points for some of the stuff they came up with. One week they barricaded the door to the girls' classroom and made a sign that said something like, "Jennifer not allowed. Kerri and Nicole only!" When we had to split into groups, I had no desire to be in their group (and they wouldn't have allowed it anyway), so I would join a group of boys. Then they would loudly (in front of the whole class and the teachers) make fun of me for being in a group with boys. I just couldn't win. The teachers acted like it was no big deal. I don't recall anyone ever telling them to stop or even acknowledging that it was going on. After all, Kerri's dad was one of the ministers at the church. Sometimes I wonder if the teachers ever looked back and wished they would have done something different. They could have changed my life.

I came home crying from church every day and nobody ever did anything about it. My parents could have easily requested that I be moved to the other class for kids in my grade, but they didn't. I remember my mom suggesting one time that I say to them, "Are you a Christian? Then why don't you act like one!?" But I had learned by that time that the less I said and the more invisible I made myself, the better off I would be.

Nicole's mom always made her invite me to her birthday parties. My mom would buy her a present and send me to the party as if Nicole wasn't the devil. One year, we were going to be out of town and I wasn't going to be able to attend her party. My mom told me to tell her thank you for inviting me, but I would be out of town and couldn't come. I did. She was in the hallway with some other girls. She said, "I didn't invite you to my party!" When I told her yes she did, and described the invitation, she said, "Oh. Well, I didn't invite you. I guess my mom sent you the invitation and didn't tell me. I didn't want you to come."

I hear Kerri is still a witch. I don't know about Nicole. She got married a couple of years ago and my mom received a shower invitation from her. She sent her a gift and had the audacity to put my name on the card too because she thought it would be funny. That many years later, I still didn't think so.