Girls Can Be Cruel Sometimes

Anniki Sommerville - 25 Nov 16

At the beginning of secondary school I didn’t have any friends. I’d joined in the second year and all the cliques had been formed. I had terrible hair (and had modelled it on Phil Oakey from the Human League) and wore jelly bean sandals with socks. Eventually after about three months I fell in with a small group of girls who all had something in common. They were all unpopular. There was a girl who was eight feet tall and had a terrible temper. Another girl looked like a chipmunk with greasy brown hair. The third had a skin condition that everyone thought was contagious (it wasn’t, it was just dry). And I can hear you thinking- God you’re bloody judgemental- categorising these poor girls based purely on looks but remember this is SECONDARY SCHOOL. This is HOW YOU ARE JUDGED.

By your Phil Oakey, deeply unfashionable hair and cheap shoes.

I was kind of okay in my group of outsiders. I got used to girls laughing at us as we waddled past. I liked my friends. We bonded over our mutual unpopularity. We hung out at weekends and told one another how lucky we were to be tall/badly dressed/greasy haired. We tried to bolster our self esteem through telling one another that we were lucky not to be part of the popular crowd. We made the best of things.

Time passed. Through some sort of fluke I ended up falling into favour with another group of girls. They weren’t perfect but they were definitely much more popular. I quickly cut off my weird hair, chucked my crap shoes away and copied everything they did. I distanced myself from my old friends and moved on.

One day one of the ‘outsider girls’ sidled up to me in the hallway. I tried to move away. It was dangerous to be associated with her. Since I’d joined this new group, the outsider group had become EVEN MORE unpopular (another girl had joined and everyone said she ‘smelt of pee’). Anyway this girl, let’s call her Wendy, tried to run alongside me and kept calling my name.

‘Niki, Niki! I’m having a party. It’s my birthday party! You’re coming yes! There will be punch and everything.’

I tried to keep running but the girl wouldn’t give up. She slipped an invite into my hand. She’d drawn a fancy flower next to my name and then written a speech bubble on the back of the envelope that said ‘HOORAH IT’S MY PARTY!’

Now I’d like to tell you that I went home and that weekend I bought Wendy a lovely present and a card and went to her party. Instead I showed the invite to my new popular friends at lunchtime and laughed like a drain. Who did this IDIOT think I was? She was such as DWEEB! Her hair was like a 1970s hippie! She didn’t even wear nail varnish! I scribbled a cartoon of Wendy on the front of my exercise book and made sure her hair looked extra rubbish. I drew an arrow coming out of her head. My new friends laughed some more. I chucked the invite in the bin and forgot about it.

Wendy had been the first girl to accept me. She’d noticed my trembling hand as I clutched my packed lunch and looked for somewhere on the grass to sit.

The following Monday I realised things had changed. Wendy didn’t look unhappy (when I dared to look at her out the corner of my eye). She just looked a bit tired and drawn. I pretended that I didn’t care and got on with life. I went home with Amanda my  new friend and we listened to ‘True Blue’ and practiced singing with her microphone. We talked about how cool Sean Penn was and how we’d like to kiss him even though he had a massive chin. But that night I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking of Wendy. I thought about her party and the fact that I hadn’t even bothered to show up. I imagined her waiting for me to arrive. I wondered when she’d given up and realised I wasn’t.

I fell out with Amanda. I got interested in boys. I got a perm that cost me all my pocket money and made me look like a clown. Life kept moving on. Now many years later,  I think about my daughter and what will happen when she goes to school. I think how easy it is to be cruel. I feel a pebble stuck in my gut when I think of what happened. It was relatively minor yet still significant.

I think of Wendy. I hope she grew up to be happy.

Anniki Sommerville

I'm Super Editor here at SelfishMother.com and love reading all your fantastic posts and mulling over all the complexities of modern parenting. We have a fantastic and supportive community of writers here and I've learnt just how transformative and therapeutic writing can me. If you've had a bad day then write about it. If you've had a good day- do the same! You'll feel better just airing your thoughts and realising that no one has a master plan. I'm Mum to a daughter who's 3 and my passions are writing, reading and doing yoga (I love saying that but to be honest I'm no yogi).

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