I had a dream . . .

. . . and it wasn't the MLK kind.  Maybe it's a result of all my recent school-related stress, but I had a dream last night about the people with whom I went to high school.  I did not have many friends in school, and the ones I had were not of the "popular" type.  The dream dredged up a lot of old, bad feelings, and my inner thoughts keep trying to beat me down.
 Convince me that I'm just kidding myself, and that I'm really not capable of achieving my goals.  The short term goal was a fluke, and that I'd be back down on the rocky bottom again, where I belong.  I've been fighting against it all day, mushed it around a bit in my head, and decided to redirect it into a bit of writing instead.

I spent a good deal of my childhood and early teen years trying, like every other prepubescent schoolgirl, to be "well liked" by the "right" people.  This really hurt my psyche early in life.  I changed schools when I entered the third grade, and my very first day wasn't exactly the best one.  I was wearing my favorite dress, the one with the tropical birds on a background of white on top with a tiered, mid-calf black skirt speckled with little neon colored palm trees.  My 80's perm was tamed just right, my headband matching my funky, shoulder-length earrings made of carved, rainbow stained balsa wood.  I found my name on a little card atop a desk pushed back to back in a two by two triangle.  Across from me sat the guy who would be my secret crush all the way through high school.  He had sandy blond hair and jade green eyes, and was the most handsome boy I'd seen to date.

When our other tablemates joined and class began, I began to notice I didn't really fit in with the kids at this new school.  We had only moved across town and they were both public schools, so it wasn't like I was a "fish out of water" case or anything.  But these kids didn't seem like the kids from the other school.  Most of them were dressed in pressed blue jeans or khakis, had on polo shirts or twin sets.  There were some pretty scruffy looking kids too, with unkempt hair and dirty-looking clothes.  I had never noticed that before at my other school.  We all kind of dressed the same, funky way.  I was always concerned with looking fashionable, and loved preening in front of the mirror like a big girl when I was that age.

Our teacher was an older, stern looking woman who clacked her chalk point down hard on the board when she wrote, often breaking off little bits of chalk that fell into the catch tray below.  She began class that day by informing us that we would be reviewing old material, to make sure we hadn't forgotten it over the Summer break.  She said we should work together as a team and come up with an answer together.  The first question she asked was,

"What is a synonym?"

We all leaned forward in our seats to keep our discussion secret, and I boldly answered first.

"A synonym is two words that are similar in meaning," I quoted, from one of the lessons I recalled from grammar lessons.

"No it's not," said my crushboy, "It's two words that are opposite"."

"No," I corrected, "That's an antonym.  You know?  Anto-, anti-?  Antonym."

"Nuh uh, synonyms are opposite!  Antonyms are the same."

"No it's not!  Synonym is same, antonym is opposite!"

We stared each other down a moment while our tablemates just sat there quietly, having either no answer or no desire to interject.

"Look," I said, "I know the answer for sure and I don't want to get it wrong.  It's "two words that are similar in meaning".  I shot my hand up in the air to give our answer.  No one else in the room was attempting to answer yet.  My crush leaned over and pushed my arm away with one hand while raising the other high over his head, kneeling up in his seat.

"It's two words that are opposite!" he exclaimed when the teacher looked his way.

"No it's not!" I said, waving my hand.  "A synonym is two words that are similar in meaning!  Antonyms are opposite words!"

"Sit down and hush up, you don't speak out of turn in my class, do you understand?" the teacher said to me with a steely glare.  "I saw his hand first and he's given your team's answer.  And he's wrong.  Your team is wrong.  Now, who else would like to try to answer for their team?"

Many hands were sent airborne on the arms of children leaning up in their seat and making little noises to entice the teacher to choose them.

Because they all had the answer now.  I had given it to them.  I raised my hand anyway, figuring she would call me anyway since I had already answered the question correctly.  She looked my way and then chose another girl on the other side of the room.

"Stand up when you answer in my class, so that everyone can see you," said the teacher to the little brown haired girl seated near her desk.  She stood up and smoothed her khaki shirt.

"A synonym is two words that are similar in meaning," she said.

"I told you so," I hissed across the table, cutting my meanest eight year old glare at my crush.

"Very good," said the teacher, "Your team gets an extra point on your reward card."  She swung her gaze to me.  "And you will go home tonight and write a Self Control paper, one paragraph, on how you lost your sense of decorum in my classroom today.  Have one of your parents sign it and return it with your homework tomorrow."

This was my first day of third grade.  Since that day I was known as a "know it all", which I still, to this day do not see why that is such a bad thing.  Why is it bad to want to possess as much knowledge as possible?  Why is it still further bad, to correct those who make incorrect statements?  Isn't it wrong to let them spread untruth?  Wouldn't you want to better yourself by being corrected?  I always appreciate corrections, because it means I learned something, or was perhaps reminded of something I forgot.  But people don't care about bettering themselves anymore, they just want to be given the moniker of greatness without doing anything for it.

It was not a good first impression.  Nobody would be friendly to me after that, and I did nothing wrong.  The teacher was a wretched bitch to me, bullying me until my dad stormed up to the school one day and demanded a meeting with her and the principal.  My dad made her cry and the bullying stopped after that.  She was picking on a couple of the other awkward kids in class as well, not just me.  One boy was so afraid of her that he vomited in the car when he discovered he had left his homework on the table at home.

I was often the target of the good old "point and laugh" scenario.  Once at a slumber party, the other girls made me sleep with my face in the host's cat's litter box.  First they thought it would be hilarious if they could make me sleep in the hall next to the litter box.  One girl said that there was only enough room on the spacious floor for five people to sleep, so the sixth one would have to sleep in the hall next to the litter box.  They all agreed that they should make the youngest one sleep in the hall, because babies shouldn't sleep in the same room with grown-up people.  And of course, I was the youngest person at the party.  They banished me to the hall with a peal of laughter, and told me to make sure to lie down right next to the litter box so that no one would step on my head in the night.  Then they decided that it would be even better if I put my head in the litter box, since nobody would step there.  So they came to the hall and ordered me to put my face in the litter box while making "meow" noises.  When I hesitated, one of the older girls said something about "helping" me, and shoved my head in.  They said I'd better leave my head there, or they would come step on me.

At another slumber party, the other girls wanted to test the "hand in warm water" myth.  They kept getting out of my earshot to whisper about something together, and I later found out it was their deciding to prank on me.  They attempted to trick me into falling asleep by all pretending to go to bed.  They made a big production of asking me if I was tired, mentioning how tired they all were, and unrolling sleeping bags.  They kept working the phrase "go to sleep" into every sentence, as though they could chant me into a slumber.  They lay sniggering in their sleeping bags, trying to fake being asleep.  By this point I knew something was up, decided to play along, and focused on being as still and sleep-like as I could.  When they were convinced, they giggled their way into the kitchen to fetch the water.  Moments later, they quietly unzipped my bag and folded back the top half and gently lifted my hand into the water.

"Did she pee?  Did she pee yet?" they asked between bursts of quiet laughter.

I made a little sleepy groan and shifted a bit, careful to keep my hand in the water.  After a few minutes they all made disappointed sounds as they realized that I was not going to pee in my sleeping bag.  Someone reached out to lift my hand out of the bowl, and when I felt their touch I shifted position again, flipping out my fingers and knocking the bowl of water over onto someone who shrieked.  They shushed her not to wake me and discussed something else to do to me.  Writing on my face with markers was out because they would get in trouble with the host's mom.  Ditto shaving my head.  They almost settled on covering me in flour, but decided the resulting mess would also get them in trouble.  They were being so loud I can't believe I convinced them I was still asleep.  They finally decided to do the "shaving cream in the hand" trick.  They filled my palm with foam and tickled my nose.  I swatted at my face with the non-foamed hand.  Someone leaned over to try again and I brought up my foamy hand.  Instead of hitting my face, I shifted my aim and smeared it down the front of the girl's shirt.  They tried both hands, but before they could reach in to tickle me I rolled over, careful to smear one hand on the Oriental-style rug and the other on the side of the couch.  I heard gasps and the pitter patter of feet as they scurried to clean the messes.  This finally detracted them from trying to play tricks on me.  I "woke up" as they were frantically trying to clean, and when I asked them what happened they didn't answer.

I stopped going to slumber parties after that.  My want to make "popular" friends finally died in high school, and my time was spent being snarky and rude to the people who had picked on me.  I didn't speak to them unless I had to, or had some smart remark to say.  The day I had finally had it was the day a group of the "popular" girls in my freshman English class who sat behind me were lamenting about prom in hushed tones.  A couple were whining about not having dates, and the couple that did have dates were discussing whether or not they would wear underwear to prom or not.  They discussed thongs and crotchless panties with garter belts, and the dateless girls were debating on who they should proposition about an invite to prom.  We were supposed to be writing a paper, which I was attempting to do, and their constant banter on Brazilian waxing and french tickler condoms became too much to bear.

"Would you shut up?" I hissed, narrowing my eyes.  "You're freshman in high school, the junior-senior prom is not for you.  It's for juniors and seniors.  So quit whining about not having a date.  You're not even supposed to go.  Nobody cares if you wear underwear or not.  Quit talking about your vaginas, you're making me sick."

They sat and gawked in quiet indigence, rolled their eyes and said they weren't talking to me anyway.  Bitches.

And so, I feel better now.  Which was the purpose of the whole thing.