I’m reading a lot about teenagers and violence and am beginning to really remember what high school was like for me. I went to the kind of school where it wasn’t the boys beating up their girlfriends, it was the girls beating up other girls. I remember one night I went to a party and a girl I knew asked to speak with me in another room. The next thing I knew, she and her friends jumped me and started hitting me. All I remember next is leaving and thinking that was the weirdest thing I had ever experienced – but it wasn’t. What happened next was.
This girl and I had a class together in school the next day. Much of our relationship had been spent passing notes to one another during class to pass the time. This day would be no different. Sure enough, a note was passed to me from her. In it were the usual comments and observations about her clothes, boyfriend, nerdy teacher etc. I was totally floored. What about the fight? What about the fact that she lured me to another room to be attacked by her girlfriends?
Not a word.
After class, I confronted her. “Mandy’ I said, what’s this? You’re passing me notes after you beat on me last night? What the hell is wrong with you? Why did you do that?”
She said that I was trying to steal her boyfriend behind her back. I thought carefully. I wasn’t even sure who he was. Then I realized I had met him recently, through a car window, in passing. I told her this. Told her I had never spoken to him and had zero interest.
“I’m sorry’ she said, “that’s what I heard.” She looked like she was going to cry.
Mandy never again, in any way acknowledged what happened that night. She continued to smile at me in the halls and make a fuss when she saw me. She never acknowledged the coolness with which I treated her. She went along oblivious to anything that didn’t immediately threaten her relationship with her boyfriend.
My home town was full of girls like Mandy. You could be beat up for being pretty or different or confident or even happy. There was so much aggression. It’s pretty intense to remember all this because so much of my focus in violence prevention is on the guy. It’s the guy who is going to abuse you assault you.
Not in my high school. Not in my day. It was the girls you had to watch out for.
