There was a boy who was not tall. Let’s call him Dickie. Dickie was the smallest boy in our class and I was the tallest girl. That was all it took.
Dickie would torment me. He’d hit me with blocks. He’d poke me with pencils. He’d call me names I didn’t understand and when I’d tattle to the teacher, she’d tell me to sit down. I had made one or two new friends when I’d transferred to this new school, but most often I’d sit by myself on the edge of the blacktop during recess and read a book. Dickie, however, would not leave me alone. He led a group of boys and girls. He’d dare them to tag me as they ran by or surround my spot by the crab apple tree and call me nasty names. I’d try to ignore them, tightening my arms and legs and keeping an eye on my book as the words started to swim. When I’d had enough, I’d stand up all of a sudden and the kids would scatter, squealing. I remember the look on Dickie’s face—he was joyously terrified.
Then I’d sit down and go back to reading.
Later, I’d run home crying.
This pattern continued throughout elementary and middle school. The name-calling became smoother, delivered with a sneer. The poking with pencils graduated to elbowing. The taggish slaps became a snatch to snap a bra strap that wasn’t even there—it set the tone for my days at schooclass="underline" Middle School Hell.
Now I was taller than the principal, wearing glasses and braces and there was nowhere to hide.
I no longer cried. I was tired and hated school and would fantasize loudly to all my friends about how my family was going to move and I was going to get out of this stupid town before the end of the year. (When my father didn’t accept the offer to move to Seattle, I was crushed.) I had to face it: I was stuck until high school graduation—thirteen years of Dickie.
I was eleven years old and five foot eight. I joined the basketball team. My job was to stand in the middle of the court with my arms raised, preventing most kids from even seeing the net. I was a wall, which pretty much describes my entire middle school experience: I stood there and I took it. Day after day. Year after year. But secretly I wanted—just once—to set aside my parents’ hippie values of Love and Peace and Togetherness on Earth and grab any of these yappy little dogs by the scruffs of their necks and . . . but that wasn’t very Zen. Instead, I swallowed it down and wrote novels at home.
I entered high school at five nine and age fourteen and it was heaven because it was tall. It was the eighties, a loud, colorful time of big hair and high-heeled boots, and I didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary anymore because I learned something new in high schooclass="underline" sarcasm was street cred. Innuendo was my shield and dry wit my sword. Add my family’s patented humor and I soon had a group of friends who didn’t mind that I was taller than them. There were even two guys, Jay and Marcus, who were taller than me! We could have entire conversations over the heads of our classmates while walking down the hall, although I’d grown used to placing my left foot forward, slumping my shoulders slightly, and tilting my chin down to speak. It never occurred to me to notice how tall someone was (or wasn’t) or how heavy they were (or weren’t); I think I’d purposefully gone blind to such differences, shaping my eyes to level the playing field. I was surprised by photos that showed my friends were all so much shorter than me. They never seemed that way in real life. We all felt equal.
And if my bullies were in my classes, I didn’t notice. I had my own friends, a boyfriend, a chosen profession (writer!), and my own high school drama; I couldn’t be bothered much by theirs. The yappy dogs weren’t part of my world any longer.
That is, until one day in chemistry class near the end of senior year when Dickie stopped at the front of my row. He leaned over my desk.
“I have a black belt,” he said evenly, “in judo.”
I honestly had no idea why he was telling me this. Was it a threat? A dare? I said nothing and went back to reading my notes. He walked away, a smug smile on his face, and I let him go.
No, really. In that instant, I let him go.
Maybe I was being a bigger person (pun intended) or secretly withholding my snark or having a sudden case of esprit de l’escalier, but I hadn’t said what had instantly popped into my mind, although it made me smile:
“And yet, you’re still shorter than me.”
Thus ended the wrath of Dickie.
Ironically, years later, I married a Shaolin Kempo instructor and I learned something important about the martial arts: if Dickie had been any kind of black belt worth his salt, there would have been no reason to tell me his rank unless he felt that it was in self-defense.
Unless he felt threatened.
By li’l ol’ me.
The Superdork of the Fifth-Grade Class of 1989
by Kristin Harmel
It was the end of the eighties. Big hair was in. At Shorecrest School, everybody who was anybody was wearing Z Cavaricci or Esprit.
I, of course, wasn’t. In fact, I didn’t own a single designer item. This, apparently, made me a complete nobody.
At least, that’s what the kids at my new school said.
My family had just moved to Florida from Ohio, meaning that I was one of the only new kids in a class that had been together since kindergarten. It also meant that on my first day of fifth grade, when I showed up in my favorite Superman T-shirt and a hot pink skirt, I marked myself as “different,” which was apparently entirely unacceptable.
“Like, where are your Z Cavaricci shorts?” asked the girl sitting beside me in Mrs. Hallinan’s homeroom that first morning.
“Z what?” I asked blankly.
“Like, no way,” she said disdainfully. “You don’t even know what that is? Omigod, the new girl is so lame!” She turned away, her nose wrinkled in outrage, and whispered something to the girl beside her. Both of them collapsed in giggles.
I’d come from a school where kids still played freeze tag at recess, hadn’t had their first kisses yet, and wore jeans and T-shirts from JCPenney and Sears. Suddenly, at this new school, I was a complete outcast due to the fact that my parents didn’t drive a BMW or Mercedes, I didn’t carry a designer purse, and I hadn’t already made it to third base with a boy (heck, I wouldn’t even have my first kiss for another four years!).
The remainder of fifth grade was pretty much downhill from there. Aside from a few high points, including a friendship with a wonderful girl named Katharine (also a new girl, who had just moved from England), I remember fifth grade by these events:
At the end of week one, I scored a lunch seat at the “popular” table, and when I laughed at popular guy Eric’s joke, I wound up spewing out a bright red slushy, through my nose, all over him. Any shot I had at being anything but the fifth grade’s Superdork was gone at that moment.
Once, while flirting with Matt, the boy I liked, I threatened to “bop him over the head” with my notebook if he didn’t stop teasing me. The class’s Little Miss Popular, Saria, overheard and shouted to the entire class, “Kristin wants to bop Matt! That means she wants to have sex with him! Bop, bop, bop! Ewww!” I thus became known as the Superdork Who Wants to Have Sex with Matt.
I finalized my outcast status midautumn when Saria stopped by my desk to loudly ask what celebrity I would want to sleep with if I had the chance. “Uh, I don’t really want to sleep with any celebrities,” I stammered. Considering that I was ten and hardly knew what sex was, I don’t think that was a particularly odd answer, but to Saria, apparently it was laughably foolish. Within five minutes, the entire class had been informed that I was a “frigid bitch” who’d never have a boyfriend.