MEAN GIRLS

Today we got Ana registered for middle school, it was fun to walk around to all her classrooms, get her photo id and see a lot of new kids as well as a few familiar faces from her elementary school.

While Dave and I were waiting in the line to pay school fees, two girls in front of us were whispering and laughing. It became apparent they were making fun of a couple of girls up in the line ahead a few places. I tend to go for the underdog, if an animal or person is being abused, I react and try to stop it before I think of the consequences.

I muttered "girls, girls!" They glanced at me and then continued on. They were mocking one of the girl's overbite. The thing is that both of the mockers had braces on and were kind of scary the way they looked with harsh makeup, skin tight jeans that showed how exactly shapeless their legs were and overly dyed hair.

I said again "hey, don't make fun of people." The denied any such activity but I was not the only person in line noticing their meanness.

After thinking about how they looked and how the girls they were making fun of looked, it seems like their own insecurity made them feel better by ridiculing someone else. One of the girls they were talking about looked uncomfortable and tried tucking her bra strap in her shirt more. But the thing was that her bra strap showed no more than the bitchy girls'. In fact she was a lot more approachable and just looked nice and friendly.

So as an adult, and this probably doesn't mean as much as someone who is mocking you, it's about them when they say mean things and laugh, it's not you, if anything, they are jealous of you and want to try and bring you down to their level.

I'm glad Tina Fey wrote Mean Girls, I hope people will realize what they are doing, and their parents will be a little more aware of their children's behavior.

It's not just children though, it happened at law school, even among the evening students who are older and supposedly wiser. Power brokers throughout history have used a common scapegoat or enemy to unite themselves with others by opposing someone else. Religions do it all the time in their judgments against others who believe differently. I hope we learned something from the Holocaust, from people who think they are better than others. If we can stop it at the junior high level, it would be a really good thing. Maybe Earl needs to talk to them about karma. I only hope when they are alone and think about it, they feel a little shame, and next time try harder to come up with something to talk about, rather than their perceived criticism and their false sense of superiority that they have the right to belittle others.