I Love a Girl in Uniform!

I went to a private Catholic School. I am not Catholic. Nor were my parents particularly rich. However, my brother got into a lot of trouble in school and my Mom wanted something better for me.

I recently found out that my brother was bullied a lot in school and that is why he has some anger issues. I was thinking about bullying today, as "cyber-bullying" was a topic of discussion on the radio a few mornings ago.

I realized that I too had been bullied in school. To the point where I (quite melodramatically) was on my hands and knees begging my parents to send me to public school.

I claimed that I had no friends in my neighbourhood, and that taking a bus to school every day meant that all the other girls I went to school with everyday live far away.

This was only partially true. The fact was, while I was a nice, smart girl, I simply had no friends. The one token "nice girl" in the class, who didn't bully me became, by default, my best friend.

The other day, the "head bully" called me up for an interview for the event that we did this past weekend. This wasn't the first time that I had encountered her since elementary school, however I simply had no patience for her that day, so I quickly passed the call onto our event partner. The woman of course butchered his quotes and mis attributed some of my company's events to him.

The first time that I ever saw her post- Catholic school was in a summer course that I was taking in second year University. "The Age of Chaucer." I was taking it with a friend of mine, and at the time I was at my thinnest and most flirted with. It was a relatively small class and I saw her sitting alone everyday.

The thought occurred to me to tell her off. When I was 9 years old I had no friends. She bullied me into leaving an entire school. I had done nothing wrong to her other than exist, and she rallied an entire classroom of girls to making my life miserable. I felt strong and righteously indignant. I was the wronged party, and she was in a vulnerable state. She should know how it made me feel!!

Then I decided to just let it go. We were now 19, and no doubt she had grown out of her bullying phase. She was alone. And while I didn't welcome her with open arms into my little group, I decided to just let her be.

A few years later I discovered that she was dating one of my friends. I told him how I knew her, and since we weren't close his behaviour distinctly cooled towards me. I understood, thinking that I probably shouldn't have immediately launched into a diatribe about how his girlfriend used to be a total bully. Perhaps not my most shining moment.

A mutual friend of ours got engaged. I ran into this girl and my friend at a wedding social. ( I tried looking up "wedding social" on wikipedia to give anyone not from Manitoba something to link to and failed. Think of it as a fundraiser for a couple's wedding where people buy tiockets to go, spend money on alcohol, dance to outdated music and enter to win prizes. It's a lot of fun, and a purely local phenomenon). I went out of my way to chat with her and make nice.

Then she married my friend. My friend invited neither me, nor my person. He snubbed us when he saw us, and began to do the same to some of our other friends. At this points all bets were off. She was evil.

Needless to say, when she called me for the interview I couldn't handle it. I can barely stand seeing her face in the newspaper every weekend. As previously mentioned, I don't believe in the word "hate." However, if I had to pick someone - she would certainly be on my list of considerations.

Bullies suck. Young or old.