2002-03-13 - 16:17
girls, girls, girls

I never knew how to fight back, because I didn't know where the fight had come from in the first place. I like to think that, if I had it to do over again, I'd fight back -- but against what? And why?

From about age 7 to age 12, I was a Girl Scout. Wasn't a bad setup for most of that time. I grew up in wishy-washy liberal Taliban-hugging Marin County, so they didn't shove any God stuff down our throats as I gather some troops did. I learned Semaphore and knot-tying. I sold cookies. I socialized with some acceptably nice girls, though I barely remember most of them. Socially speaking, I had a couple good and a couple bad experiences, but on balance, as far as I can recall, it at least wasn't as bad as school.

Then people started middle school. Also, as it happened, nearly everyone left our already-small troop except for me and three other girls, whom I'll call Faith, Harmony, and Darla, to protect the guilty. (And hey, I'm sure they grew up to be lovely women. I was no angel at that age myself.)

Darla had been my friend in our Montessori school for a few years. She was a weird and wonderful girl, always making up stories to entertain her friends and getting into embarrassing situations (also, not infrequently, to entertain her friends). She left our school after fifth grade and went to Mill Valley Middle, where she befriended Harmony. Faith was the troop leader's daughter, so she sort of couldn't leave. She was a rather boring, essentially nice girl, but easily swayed by Harmony and Darla. Harmony was relatively new to the troop. She went to Mill Valley Middle School, as did the other girls in the troop except me--I'd stayed in Montessori school through sixth grade.

Harmony was popular.

Things started shifting. Subtly at first, but... well, no, not really, not so subtly. The signs were pretty clear. Darla wasn't silly anymore. All the stories had dried up. In their place, she started telling real-life stories. Stories about me, told behind my back to Harmony in order to rack up Coolness Points. Everything embarrassing I'd done in grade school; every manic-depressive moment I'd had of bursting into tears at birthday parties. I got to find out about these when they were used casually as surprise ammo by Harmony. "Is it true that you cried at a party because someone spilled juice on you?"[1]

We went on camping trips; I got ditched in the woods. I slept in the troop leader's tent because they were careful to let me hear them tossing around ideas for what violent things they were going to do to me while I slept. I was seriously afraid of them. I was a high-strung kid, easy to torment. I was alternately threatened and ignored. I was the butt of every joke. If I gave them a little lip back, they told on me to the troop leader (Faith's mom, remember?).

Et cetera. Details change, but it was all the usual stuff. I was Picked On. People who were middle school girls know how this works, and people who weren't can only imagine. Anyway, the point of the story isn't the treatment I got in Girl Scouts (or middle school, or wherever else). The point is the glorious moment of sociological clarity I experienced on that camping trip in the spring of 1994.

The first part was within a couple hours after Harmony first started in on me with the anecdotes so graciously provided by my good friend Darla. Darla took me aside and said she was sorry she told Harmony all those things about me, but it made Harmony like her more. My response was understandably noncommittal.

But the real blaze of insight (hey, I was 11) came later in the trip, after we'd had more adventures in social ostracism, when Harmony and I were alone in the bathroom together, and she turned to me and said she really didn't mean any of that stuff she said to me when the other girls were around. She just did it, she said, because they expected her to and they wouldn't like her anymore if she didn't.

I related to her my earlier exchange with Darla. It had little impact on her outlook.

I quit Girl Scouts in the middle of the Memorial Day Parade that year, but I saw the girls at school for the few months I spent at MVMS that fall. After that, the only one I ever ran into was Darla. She ended up a pretty sweet girl, but never became someone I'd want to spend more time with. She wasn't very interesting anymore. She'd lost whatever it was that made her act up in grade school, back when she was the weird one.

[1] This wasn't literally true, but something similar had once occurred. I won't bore you with the details.

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