Bully Cookies
“If we go forward, we die, if we go back, we die. Let’s go forward and die.” -Ashanti Proverb, Ghana
“Why are we stopping here?”
My mother maneuvered into a parking spot at 7-Eleven on the way to the first day of seventh grade. It was also my first morning in Calgary, a place I’d lived for exactly fourteen hours.
“I’m getting a carton of milk to put in your lunch.”
“Oh.”
Since this would be my seventh school in seven years, I was no stranger to the what’s-your-name-go-see-misses-so-and-so-in-room-number-something square-dance I was about to enter. Arrive at school, spend the morning looking for someone also looking for someone to eat lunch with, then repeat daily. Until at least one lunchtime audition results in the casting of a friendship.
Starting over in a new place was familiar territory. I knew how to say hello in September and wave goodbye June. Extracting whatever child developing nourishment was available by planting my feet quickly and shallowly in each new place; reading the environment at a glance and shaping-shifting for success. Whatever the elementary school zeitgeist, I’d learned to meet it quickly: puppets, four-square, macramé, monkey bars, marbles, bug catching, girl scouts, and tether-ball were all previous portals to quick belonging.
On the outside, I became a master of demonstrating shallow mastery. On the inside, I’d learned to regularly trim my emotional roots so they never tried to reach too deep.
The amazing Bonsai Girl.
I was also a dreamer of the pragmatic variety. So, waiting for a carton of milk that day, I was expecting nothing but a carton of milk. While secretly wondering if this was where I might be allowed to grow all the way up.
Through the passenger window, I saw a group of laughing girls wearing puffy-blue jackets near the edge of the parking lot. I looked down at the knee-length tweed coat I’d chosen because every slightly-older-than-me girl in my last school was wearing one.
“Great.”
A few blocks later we stopped in front of a low brick school with a few kids milling around near the entrance. Several gangly boys were pulling grass from the lawn and rubbing it into each other’s hair. Behind them was a sign that said, “Welcome to F.E. Osborne, Home of the Eagles,”. This seemed unlikely.
I stepped out of the car as my mom handed me the junior high version of mother’s milk.
“Good luck. The 103 bus stops right there,” she pointed across the street. Don’t forget.” Then she pulled away. I took a moment to commit the bus number to memory, since walking home sucks when you’re not sure where you live.
The morning air was cool, though clearly I was not, as I leaned awkwardly against a bicycle rack waiting for something to happen. The girls I’d seen at 7-Eleven arrived and stood in a puffy-blue clump by the main door. Still laughing, they were jostling and teasing each other in that jockeying-for-position way that indicates no one is safe from scorn. They were also arriving with empty hands, no notebooks, no pencil cases, no nothing: evidence of the school’s good fortune that they’d bothered to come at all. I realized these must be the popular girls and pulled my new red binder closer to my chest to obscure my lunch bag from view.
How had I not realized that a wrinkled paper bag is the most ridiculous thing anyone could carry to the first day of junior high? Suddenly I was an Olympic diver, my toes gripping the tallest platform, poised to leap while also carrying a pool-noodle.
Then the one with shiny-black hair, who seemed to be the leader looked over at me.
“What’s your name?”
I told her.
“What grade are you in?”
“Seven”.
She walked toward me to mark her territory. “Why do you look like a Grade 8?”
“I don’t know,” I managed a shrug and a weak smile, trying not to look confused. Could this be a compliment?
Then she in pushed me off the junior high, high dive platform like only bullies can, by smugly accusing me of the furthest thing from the truth.
“Oooooo…think you’re a foxy lady, don’t you?”
The others laughed as I felt myself fall toward the deep end.
I had no defence. I’d never heard the word ‘foxy’ used outside of a disco-song and wasn’t sure exactly what it meant.
“Look at you foxy-lady,” she added, for her audience, “Think you’re pretty ‘foxy’ don’t you?”
The rising dread in the pit of my stomach managed to squeeze out a single word through the cotton drying in my mouth.
“No.”
Why did I feel like I was lying? Why was my body frozen into the shape of their accusation?
The puffy-blue girls laughed louder and took turns trying out their new chant, “Ooooo…Foxy Laaady…”
Mercifully, the eternity between 8:03 and 8:05 ended when the bell rang. But all I could hear was the splash of junior high closing in around my head.
The main doors opened, and seven-hundred kids were pulled into the vacuum of the 1977–78 school year past a yellow poster-board that read: “New Students — Go to the Gym.” Shaken, but following the herd, I sat on the gym floor as instructed. A short brunette teacher with a string-laced whistle around her neck was telling everyone to find a spot and sit down. Her tone simultaneously communicating you are welcome here and you don’t want to get on my bad side. As I waited to be sorted with the other adolescent sheep, I scanned for the puffy-blue girls with my new vigilance, relieved to find them nowhere.
My crossed ankle-bones were pressing against the gym floor and I was keenly aware that while I was sitting with everyone, I was also sitting with no one.
Other students were from local elementary schools, and from my limited vantage point they all seemed to know at least one other person. There was just enough space on the floor around me to indicate that I was a complete stranger — and therefore potentially strange. A few kids looked at me and went back to their conversations.
After another minute-long eternity, I noticed a girl nearby with brown chin-length hair. She noticed me too, and gestured to the open spot next to her.
“Do you want to sit with us?”
“Okay. Sure,” I scooted across gym-floor lines toward her unexpected humanity.
“I’m Kerry. I moved here from England last year. So, I still have a bit of an accent,” she was completely sincere, as if she were apologizing for having a slight cough after a cold.
“Oh, that’s cool. I just moved here last night.”
“Wow! Where are you from?”
“California.”
“California! I would love to go to California! What’s it really like there?”
She was a human lifeboat.
I felt the tension in my body ease as we shared the basics about ourselves. Number of sisters, school subjects we hated, T.V stars we had crushes on. She was warm and generous. I could not believe my good fortune. She introduced me to two girls sitting with her and we discussed where to meet at lunch if we were forced into different homerooms. Then the principal spoke, offering a few words no one would ever remember and the sheep-sorting began. When my name was called to line-up behind a bearded teacher named Mr. Cole, it was followed by one of the best moments of my life when Kerry was called to line up with me.
In the weeks that followed, I grew used to two equal and opposite realities. Part of me was doing fine. Generally liked by teachers, I had friends, including Kerry; I was a trusted confidant, and even invited to a few sleepovers — the litmus test of junior high social success. On the other hand, the puffy-blues, who were a year older than me, proved to be masters of subtle torture, taunting me anytime they found me alone, or silently mouthing “foxy” when they pushed me into the throng between classes: just hard enough to make it look like an accident. I was confused and ashamed of the weird label they’d given me. So, I suffered their obsession in isolation, which gave them all the power they needed to keep right on puffing.
One day, in a sudden burst of ultra-misguided inexperience, I decided to solve my bully-problem myself by (wait for it) becoming a cheerleader.
I cared about sports as much as I cared about the price of lentils, but between my step-father’s Monday Night Football addiction and witnessing a dozen Hollywood tropes, I believed cheerleaders were not only at the top of the popularity power pyramids — they BUILT the pyramids.
No one would dare bully a cheerleader, right? Who would risk being helicoptered through the rival team’s goal posts by the Sisters of Stretch — protecting one of their own? Excitedly, I wrote my name on the audition sign-up sheet in the girl’s change room, only slightly apprehensive about the fact that I’d never been flexible enough to touch my own toes.
The big day came.
It turned out the toe-touching thing was kind of a big deal. Worse than that, I was catapulted into a terrified existential depression, when the leader of the puffy-blues was formally introduced as assistant head cheerleader. By the time I understood what was about to happen, it was too late to slip my sock feet out the back door. So, I waited in fervent prayer until my name was called among the third group of hopefuls. Clearly, God was choosing to sacrifice me on the rock of humiliation. I saw no way out but to ‘fake-enthusiasm’ my way through their bending, kicking, hollering check-list of requirements. Given the side-ways glances, smirks and eyebrow raises of our teen-judges, I suspected the checklist was designed to entertain as much as to eliminate.
I felt like Lucille Ball sneaking into a line of can-can dancers, only to discover the audience is a firing squad.
In less than six-minutes I gave the puffy-blues enough fuel to power my inferiority-complex right through graduate school.
I predicted things would get worse — and they did. Over the next few weeks my bullies replaced the confounding label of “foxy lady” with “slut” — which was much less confusing. They also expanded their push parties and threat utterances to the bus-stop and the mall.
But something I could not have predicted also happened after the great cheer disaster.
My inferiority started having regular bouts of infuriation.
If a puffy-blue could lead a pep-rally, either something was terribly wrong with my taxonomy of human possibilities or — anything was possible. As an Amazing Bonsai Girl, I chose to go with the second paradigm since it was more useful for my purposes. I’d already been given a disco handle, so I decided to grab it hard and start something better than cheerleaders. It was 1977 and the Saturday Night Fever dance craze was just the zeitgeist I needed. I knew the puffy blues would only puff harder if I dared to dance on the stage of my own existence. But if they were going to bully me for slinking silently through the junior high hall of shame, they might as well bully me for doing something I actually LIKED doing. I was terrified, but I was also sick of being terrified, so I went for it.
A few weeks of inventing choreography and several fun after-school rehearsals later, the Dynamics Dance Club was born. We brought ‘Stayin’ Alive’ alive at the next school assembly — even getting on the good side of Mrs. Stevenson, the whistle-wearing gym teacher, who gave us a decent review in the school paper. Most importantly, starting a new club increased my currency (in my own mind) and it occurred to me for the first time that I had the right to NOT be bullied.
So, I did what no one ever suggested in the 70’s — I asked the grown-ups for help.
My parents met with Mr. Yates, the Principal, which prompted Mr. Yates, to meet with the puffy-blues and THEIR parents. This resulted in my torture shrinking to the size of ‘SHG’s’ — Silent Hateful Glares. And while these are unpleasant, they’re easier to ignore when you’re busy dancing with your friends.
Miraculously, I DID stay at F.E. Osborne for all three years of junior high. I also stayed in Calgary until I grew all the way up, only leaving during the 1990’s for training and education purposes.
In 2004, I flew back to Calgary with a brand-new master’s degree to start a brand-new job. I was sitting in the first-row of a De Havilland Dash 8 on a Friday afternoon, watching a middle-aged flight attendant deliver a pre-recorded safety demonstration, while passengers ignored her. It seemed cruel to flip through a magazine when she was right in front of me, so I watched politely, thinking about the girlfriend sleepover reunion Kerry had helped organize for my first night back. The flight attendant looked over at me and smiled.
“I know you,” she said over the French version of how not to die if the plane crashes.
“You do?” I scanned her face, found nothing familiar and assumed she was mistaken.
“My friends and I used to tease you at school.”
“Really?” I looked at her name tag. It was puffy-blue, assistant head cheerleader.
For a moment I was disoriented by an icy airplane cocktail of one part awkwardness and two parts shock: shaken.
As the feeling took hold, it seemed to dislodge a crusty remnant of hurt that floated from my heart to my brain.
“Yeah, you did.”
“Omigod, we were such assholes to you.” Her words increased my disorientation. Was that regret in her voice or was she bragging? She clicked the demo oxygen mask into its overhead compartment and added, “Wait a sec okay? I’ll be right back.”
Where was I going to go? The main aircraft door was already bolted and the loading bridge retracted.
I had no idea what was about to happen. So, I sat there. A slightly dysregulated human question mark in a seatbelt.
I took a breath and blew it out slowly. Steady girl. She returned momentarily with a large basket of cellophane wrapped airplane cookies and sat down next to me.
“I feel terrible about how awful we were to you.”
She paused and I looked at her directly. She was telling the truth.
“I’m sure you get how screwed-up things were for us back then. I just want you to know that I have three kids and I raised them to never bully anyone.”
“That’s great…” I offered tentatively.
Then she put the entire basket of cookies in my lap, adding, “These are for you.”
“Oh!” I laughed, feeling the crusty remnant of hurt soften into something a bit mushier. I took another breath and offered an olive branch from my all the way grown-up self. “It’s so weird that this is happening today, because I’m on my way to start a new job Monday, as a school mental health therapist. So, I guess I have to thank you — for the career idea.”
“Seriously? That is weird. Well, we sure could have used you back then.”
“I think you did.” I laughed.
“Shit,” she covered her face with her hands and shook her head, ‘I’m so sorry, please take the cookies with my sincere apology — it’s all I have here.”
The other flight attendant passed by and looked at her expectantly.
“ I’m so sorry, she said genuinely, “I gotta go.”
“Of course, go, thanks for the cookies and,” I hesitated…”just thanks.”
She nodded, returning my smile and disappearing somewhere into the space behind me.
I turned toward the window and within a few minutes watched both the ground and what was left of the mushy hurt roll away under the miracle of flight.
It dawned on me that this was the second time I was heading to a new school in Calgary at the last minute, not exactly sure where my house was — since I didn’t have one yet. Feeling the basket of cookies on my lap, I imagined the fun of sharing them with Kerry and my old friends at the sleepover reunion. I opened a package and took a bite. It was honestly delicious. So delicious I couldn’t imagine it tasting any better…unless maybe it had come with a carton of milk.
