As I mentioned before, I'm not really a person who loses her temper often, and hand-in-hand with that, I've rarely considered the possibility of seeking revenge. Probably the closest I've ever come is wishing revenge on a particular clique of "mean girls" in my junior high school. I went to a school in Farmington Hills, MI which was comprised mostly of upper middle class kids. Many of their fathers were white-collar executives in the automobile industry, and they lived in spacious homes in suburbia. Several of my classmates had brand new cars in their garages, ready and waiting for the day they received their drivers licenses. Interestingly and perhaps predictably, the clique of "mean girls" didn't come from this upper echelon of financial stature. They lived in the middle class neighborhood where I lived, in smaller brick homes, where the fathers were blue-collar types.
The group of "mean girls" was perhaps 6 to 8 in number, and their mission was to belittle, humiliate, and make everyone else's life generally miserable. My mother was friends with the mother of one of their ringleaders. She was well aware of her daughter's bad behavior and would say with her teeth gritted, "I'd just like to put Cynthia on a slow boat to China."
Their mean-spirited antics were numerous and I've undoubtedly forgotten many of them over the years, but some were bad enough that I'll always remember. One day in 9th grade I was walking home with my friend Teri on a late winter afternoon. The sun was out and it was one of those Michigan days where the snow was melted to a dirty, messy slush. Our road was typically full of potholes from the harsh winter that had just passed. The mean girls came careening by in an older sister's car, deliberately hitting a pothole adjacent to us that was full of muddy water. You guessed it, we were left covered with dripping, muddy slush and all we could hear was the high pitch of hysterical laughter as they drove away.
Denise, a friend of mine, had beautiful, long straight hair down to her rear--the type of hair that every girl wanted back then. One day in the hallway at school, as everyone was leaving for the afternoon, the mean girls snuck up on her from behind and each smashed a wad of gum in her hair. When she got home, her parents determined the only thing they could do to fix the mess was to take her for a haircut. I remember that Denise didn't come to school for a couple of days following that incident. She shed lots of tears and hated her shorter hair.
Another friend, Marilyn, was short in stature, very curvy, and somewhat overweight. The mean girls teased her mercilessly about her weight. One of them, Therese D., was extremely skinny and knobby-kneed herself and was particularly relentless in hassling Marilyn. I'll never forget one night when I was over at Marilyn's house and we were telling her dad about Therese and her antics. He suggested a retort to the next unkind remark: "If it weren't for your Adam's apple, you wouldn't have a figure at all." We thought that was hilarious!
There was one poor, friendless girl in junior high named Karen H., who received the brunt of the harrassment. We were all in gym class together and she huddled in a corner of the locker room as she dressed for gym and received a barrage of insults daily. She was tall with buck teeth and a head full of very short, dishwater blonde, tightly-curled hair. The mean girls nicknamed her "Steel Wool" because of her hair. The rest of us hung back quietly, wordlessly dressing for gym class and just glad that we weren't the focus of the ridicule. It was terribly cruel, and a wave of anger wells up through my chest still today as I remember. I'm sure that Karen, wherever she is, has never forgotten it.
Although my friends and I spoke of revenge many times, we didn't carry through and Marilyn never even used her father's retort. We knew that it would just aggravate a bad situation which was already almost intolerable. However, as adults we've had some conversations about our good ol' junior high days, and we've come to realize that, in a roundabout way, we did get revenge.
After she graduated from college, Marilyn stopped at a Denny's restaurant for coffee one morning on her way to her first teaching interview (she ended up getting the job). She had lost weight, was dressed up and looking good, and the waitress who served her was Therese D. The thought still makes me chuckle. When the 10-year reunion booklet came out, Jane B. received "honorable mention" for being married the longest and having the most kids. She was 27 at the time--not an "honor" I would have wanted at that age! I've learned through my mother that Cynthia M. is a hairdresser in Miami, FL who has been married and divorced several times. And from pictures of our recent 40th class reunion, I could see that Susan A. is now extremely overweight and looks to be about 70 years old rather than 57. Now there's some really bad karma. :-)
I can only conclude after all these years that revenge is ours!
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