Even today I hear the whispers as I entered the classroom that morning. It was 8th g
rade and I had spent the summer with my cousins. I had “blossomed” as we said back then. By lunchtime, the whispers and giggles were no longer hidden as the girls glared at me and one of the more obnoxious boys came up to me and flat out said “So Dianne, where did you get the falsies?” Without hesitation, I lifted my t-shirt and asked “Do these look fake to you?”
That began three years of hell that I have not forgotten to this day. I dreaded going to school but with both my parents working 12 hour shifts at the local factory, I did not want to burden them with my problems at school. They let us know enough that we were burdens as it was, me and my two younger brothers.
It was just a few weeks after school started that another girl, another “outcast” stopped by my locker and asked if I wanted to hang out some time. That was how I got introduced to pot. I loved how it made me feel able to drift away from the teasing at school. During high school, we got into cocaine. I did my best to try to hide my figure and getting hooked on drugs helped me stay skinny but it didn’t hide certain attributes.
I got clean when my aunt came to stay with us after her husband died. She was alone as they had never had children and it did not take long for her to figure out what was going on, even though her brother (my dad) and sister-in-law were clueless to what had been going on.
My aunt saved me in two ways. She helped me clean up my act and get off drugs, but she also showed me what going to bat for someone means. She had come to school to pick me up for a “girl’s day out” when classes were over and that same, obnoxious boy from the falsies statement three years earlier was making remarks about me again, only he had gotten louder and meaner over the years.
Without batting an eye, my aunt looked at him and smiled. “Are you Jerry B’s son?” He nodded yes. “I thought so. He used to tease me all the time, too. In fact, I remember the note he gave me asking me to go to the drive-in with him. I turned him down flat. You are definitely your father’s son, teasing the girl you are crushing on. Just like your father, you are going about it all wrong. She doesn’t date jerks, either.”
The other kids laughed and he turned red. Sure enough, he did end up asking me to prom a year later. I said no without hesitation. They say boys tease girls they like? All I got out of remembering those years is how he acted that day in 8th grade and a drug addiction that could have ended everything for me if not for the love and caring of my aunt. Today, I am happily married with two daughters about to start junior high. I am very actively involved in their lives. I’m not going to let them be bullied by some boy who doesn’t know how to express himself in a positive way. I heard the boy from my own adolescent years just had his third wife file for divorce. Seems the girl I was back then got the better end of the deal after all.
