Part 1 of 4: The Problem with Peaking in Middle School and other stories of bullying

Disclaimer: This is a several-part piece that talks about my most painful experiences in my childhood and teens years with bullying. In order to (emotionally) feel safe sharing these stories, some names have been changed as well as minor details. As a woman in my late forties, who has battled (for decades)—as many women do— with myself over whether or not I have the right or deserve to speak my personal truth and perspective on events that happened to me, I’ve decided to not allow that inner battle or my fears to stop me. Who knows if anyone will read this. Who knows if anyone who reads this will be someone from my past who participated, witnessed or knew about these events. And, who knows if anyone will care. I do know that someone out there will relate. That my story will connect with someone. So here are my true stories of bullying and the effects they had on me.

Part 1: Picked-On

The first time I was bullied was in second grade by my (supposed) best friend’s older sister, I’ll call her “Andy”. Andy caught us playing “doctor” in my friend's room, and then threatened to “tell on” us if we didn’t do certain things. One time Andy wanted me to wear a certain skirt “or else”, and another time when I declined a sleepover invite, she said I better come over (my friend was sad) “or else”. Although these things were benign, it was scary to have someone hold something over me, something which I wasn’t even sure would land me in trouble. (Our definition of doctor was a consensual flashing of private parts to each other!). In my recollection of this, I do remember that my older sister found out about the blackmail behavior Andy was doing, and basically told this bully-bitch she better watch out or else! My sister was a year older than Andy and had a team of junior high friends willing to have her (and my) back. I’d like to think this is what stopped Andy, but really it was that my family wound up moving away at the end of that school year. But this was the first of what would be many significant moments where I learned about bullying.

This is what bullied looks like. Me, age 7. 1982.

The second time I was bullied was in 4th grade. Ironically, as the new kid (yet again) in 3rd grade, no one bothered me for the entire year, so much so that I just about forgot that ever important-lesson of the year before—that some people can be really shitty. Then 4th grade rolled up, and the Pizza Hut outfit happened, and my life went right to shit again.

  

Here’s how it went down: Sheryl, my mother, insisted on dressing me, and we all know that as kids get closer to puberty and the tween years, that shit doesn’t fly. Kids will resist, but if you have a persistent mother who really thought of you as a living doll at times, you will lose and I did. 

Thus, as 4th grade began, Sheryl schlepped me to Filene's one weekend for some back-to-school shopping and bought me what would quickly be dubbed as The Pizza Hut dress due to its— you guessed it— white and red checkered pattern. Not cute. Oh, but Sheryl thought it was, and insisted—despite my wrinkled nose at the outfit— that I looked adorable. Though I wanted an Esprit tee-shirt and pair of acid washed jeans, those were vetoed quickly. My mother ascribed to the “you have to buy outfits or ‘“ensems” (as in ensembles) as she referred to them.

 

The next day when I picked out my clothes (she also bought me another outfit that, although I resembled a bee due to its black and yellow colors, was far more stylish and frankly less weird). I did not select Pizza Hut but instead chose Bee and she said, nope. “I didn’t spend 500 dollars on clothes for you to not wear that adorable matching shirt and skirt.” Guilt was a prevalent motivator with Sheryl. So I begrudgingly put on the ensemble and—the piece de resistance—she had also purchased matching red shoes that I had to wear as well.

The next day would be the first and last time that I would ever wear the monstrosity. I walked into the classroom to immediate shouts of “Pizza Hut!” led by the scrappiest, smallest girl in the class who also happened to be the scariest. She had a ratty mullet and beady eyes. We’ll call her Andy Andrews (yes, she shared the same first name as my first bully!). She followed her chant with “I’m going to kick your ass you stupid bitch.”  Yep, this school was a lot tougher than my previous one. She continued to taunt me all day and at recess. The only reason why she didn’t follow through with her threat was because it rained, and we had to stay inside where I sat, alone, doodling on a piece of paper, my friends all terrified of the Pizza Hut cooties I now possessed. Andy Andrews whispered how she was going to punch me in the tits and other uncomfortable places (I mean is there a comfortable place to get punched?). 

 

“Tomorrow, Goodman. I’m gonna kick your ass. I’m not kidding, either.”

And indeed she was not.

The  next day, I’m standing in the center of the chalked-in-lines for hopscotch when Andy decides to run up to me and pummel my chest, dead center between my barely-budding boobs. She does it over and over as I stand, like a weeble wobble who wobbles and wobbles and just won’t fall down. I can’t find my voice at first, the breath punched out of my lungs.

 

Then I do.

“Someone get a teacher,” I lamely squawk.

No one did.

But the recess bell wrang, the crowd dispersed, and Andy walked away like we had just finished a game of kickball.

Maybe it was my lack of falling down? Maybe it was because I didn’t snitch on her? Whatever it was, Andy Andrews never bothered me again.

Me with my beloved cabbage patch kid, 4th grade. 1984

Unfortunately, others did. 4th grade was just getting started and so was the bullying.

Not long after Andy Andrews punched me in the tits, another girl Traci S, befriended me. One time, we had an-almost sleepover at her house, where her mother confessed that they had a snake infestation in their basement but hadn’t seen one in a few days “so they’re probably gone”. I suddenly became too sick to spend the night (I had and have a crazy snake phobia). That Monday, at recess of course, she spread a rumor that reached me faster than Andy Andrew’s punches to my tits:

“Hannah humped a pillow at our sleepover.”

The most ironic part of this rumor included this confession from Tracy:

“Well, no, I didn’t see her do it, but she told me she did.”

I barely understood what “humping” meant!

Then others came forward: Jess D claimed I “humped” a shampoo bottle during a sleepover at her house. (There was never a sleepover, and also how does one “hump” a shampoo bottle?). 

It rose to a fevered pitch at recess one day where I clutched my cabbage patch kid named Diane Alise while standing in the middle of the crowd, numb and silent this time, as they pummeled me not in the tits but worse, right into my self-worth.

However, by the grace of I-have-no-idea-what, a popular and powerful girl named Denise P stepped right into the center of that mess and yelled at all of the kids that they had to stop. “Enough is enough,” she said. “Leave Hannah alone!”

And poof! With that, they stopped, and it was never mentioned again.

But damage done. So. Much. Damage. Done. 

The next moment of bullying was by one of my supposed best childhood friends who I’ll call “Heather”. Looking back, I see all the microaggressions she hurled. anti-Semitic is the word we would use today. She told me I had a “big Jewish nose” and she and one of her friends would come to my softball games and sing, “Hey, Jew” to me. Not all the time. Not loudly. But enough so I heard it. The culmination of her bullying me is a fuzzy memory. I’m not sure how it started, but we were at my house in my room, and she was brushing my hair. The next thing I knew she was taking handfuls of Vaseline and putting it in my hair. I don’t know why. I vaguely remember her saying, stay still. This is going to look good.

It did not.

By the time my mom came home from work, I looked like a greaser from the 1950s. I was in tears, screaming that I never wanted to go back to school.

I was home for a week. My mom tried everything to get it out. Vinegar. Dish soap. The only thing we could do was wait, and then I had to cut a lot of it off. For the first time in my life, I had short hair, and it horrified me to think I might look like a boy.

Then I went back to school.

You would think that I would be met with a flurry of more bullying. But no. The reign of terror was over, and it would remain so for another two years.

PART 2: From Picked-on to Popular to Picked-on (Again) to Invisible to... High School Reunions

Part 2 of 4: The Problem with Peaking in Middle School and other stories of bullying

Be sure to start with Part 1

“Popular”

The precursor to my rise to popularity began at the start of middle school, where all of the elementary schools in town merged starting at 5th grade. It all started when one of the most popular boys (Matt B) in school had a crush on me. I found out from a message delivered by one of the most popular girls, Christie P. Christie went to the same elementary school as Matt, and they were such good friends that she wanted to broker the blooming relationship between us. So, she convinced Matt to ask me on a “date” to see Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I got a cheek-kiss as the credits rolled, and with that, we were an item.

Now that Matt B liked me and my elementary school past was forgotten, I felt my past was in the rearview mirror and I could relax. When that relationship faded and 6th grade began, good ole Christie P. reappeared to tell me that another one of her old, elementary school friends (and former boyfriend!) Pat S had a crush on me. All of these crushes baffled me. I wasn’t blonde or beautiful (these were the only criteria I understood for popularity). Whatever! I went with it. 

The face of popular! Me, fall of 6th grade. 1986.

This time, probably because Pat S. and I lasted several months, a lifetime in middle school quite frankly, Christie P. didn’t take it too kindly, and by month two began to harass me with prank phone calls, disguising her voice and accusing me of being a “slut” and “a bitch” and stealing someone’s boyfriend. 

Similar to my very first encounter with a bully, Christie P.’s tyranny against me ended when my older sister intervened. One night after about a month of horrible prank phone calls, my sister grabbed the phone from me and screamed, “Leave my sister alone or I will kick your ass!” 

Christie P enlisted her own older sister to get involved, but my sister annihilated her too:

“If you or your little shit of a sister so much as even look at Hannah the wrong way, I will destroy you.”

That was the end of Christie P.’s bullying. The next day in school, many people cheered me on for defeating The Queen Bee. I had no idea that Christie P’s  reign of terror wasn’t aimed only at me. From the woodwork of the 6th grade hall of Cluster One came countless people thanking me for overthrowing the Evil Queen. Turns out, Christie P. had been mean to people for years, and by getting her to back down from me, people looked at me a little differently.

  

Within days of Christie backing off of me, a new target was chosen. This girl was minding her own business, sitting in Reading class during free-reading time, thumbing through a Judy Blume novel when Christie began to whisper to the girls around her—and I overheard it— “Stacy stuffs her bra”. My ears burned for Stacy; after all, just two years prior I was the victim of an embarrassing rumor.

 

This whispering evolved once the bell rang for the lunch period. Now Christie had enlisted a few of her hangers-on into chanting “Stuffy” as they trailed behind her. 

I wanted to scream at Christie. I wanted to be as confident and scary as my sister. But I simply wasn’t.

 

So I did the only thing I knew how to do. At lunch that day, I went right over to where Stacy sat alone with her book, her eyes steadfast on the pages, and I said, “Hey, I don’t believe you stuff your bra.” It wasn’t eloquent or really the point, but it was all I had in the moment. She looked up at me, and gave me a wry smile, “I don’t. These are real.” We both laughed and that solidified our friendship.

  

Not long after that day at lunch, Christie started in again whispering, “Stuffy” to Stacy again during Reading class. This time, another girl Michelle, who had previously in the year gone to battle with Christie for making fun of her coke-bottle specs, threw her pencil down. Our teacher was typically asleep during silent reading time, so he didn’t notice. Everyone’s head snapped up from their books collectively. I gripped my own paperback, my heart thudding in my chest with the possibility of an actual fight in the classroom, and flashbacks of my encounter in fourth grade with Andy Andrews.

 

We all watched Michelle walk over to Christie, lean down to her, and whisper, rather loudly, “Shut the fuck up, Christie. You’re just jealous that Stacy has tits and you don’t!”

 

As Michelle walked back she shot both me and Stacy a very cheshire cat grin, and we both smiled back at her.

And in that moment, we became a powerful trio. By the end of 6th grade I had two best friends, who were just like me, accidentally popular. The remaining years of middle school were the three of us, joined by both nerds and cheerleader-types. I felt protected by my friends—for the first time in my life—and the threat of being bullied melted away.

 

When Stacy, Michelle, and I were together, we were unstoppable. We called ourselves the Wonder Triplets (like the Saturday morning cartoons) and led the way for the rest of middle school, hosting sleepovers and parties (mainly at my house) that were quite epic.

And the rest of middle school was not only bully-free, but I became something I never had been and would never be again—cool. 

My diary entries from those years are filled with stories of boys, parties, and friends. Though I sometimes felt overwhelmed and exhausted (and sometimes would hide in my closet and cry by myself, but more on that later) by the constantness of what “popular” entailed (boys, parties, friends), I pushed through because without that, I would be the Pizza Hut girl Who Humped Pillows with Vaseline in her Hair. 

And no one wants to be her.

Me at the height of “cool” (ha!). 8th grade, Sept 1988

Read Part 3: Back to Picked-On

Disclaimer: This is a several-part piece that talks about my most painful experiences in my childhood and teens years with bullying. In order to (emotionally) feel safe sharing these stories, some names have been changed as well as minor details. As a woman in my late forties, who has battled (for decades)—as many women do—with myself over whether or not I have the right or deserve to speak my personal truth and perspective on events that happened to me, I’ve decided to not allow that inner battle or my fears to stop me. Who knows if anyone will read this. Who knows if anyone who reads this will be someone from my past who participated, witnessed or knew about these events. And, who knows if anyone will care. I do know that someone out there will relate. That my story will connect with someone. So here are my true stories of bullying and the effects they had on me.

Part 3 of 4: The Problem with Peaking in Middle School and other stories of bullying

Back to Picked-on

As with every ascent to the top, comes the crash to the bottom. While I never again became Pizza Hut Girl Who Humps Pillows With Vaseline in Her Head, I actually became something far worse—Fat.

Remember how I mentioned going into my closet and crying? Well, that became a coping mechanism on the regular by the end of 8th grade. By that point I was seriously dating the baddest bad boy in our class, Derrick S. We were very on brand with my middle school self—the most anti-popular power couple in the grade. He was brooding, an artist and a skater. He got into trouble often and even teachers took me aside and said this boy would be my downfall (I was a “good girl” with good grades). This relationship was exciting and sexy and scary and sad, all at once. We got together in April of the school year (though had been flirting and talking for months before) and by the summer, we had exchanged “I love yous” and I was contemplating going past second base with him.

 

Meantime, my other triplets had exceeded the bases with their respective serious boyfriends and I was starting to feel a strain between us. Simply put, in my mind, they were getting ahead of me and I wasn’t sure I wanted to catch up.

 

I coped by hiding in my closet and not only crying but binge eating, something I watched my parents do when they were stressed, and it was always followed by restrictive diets. This was normal in my house. But for me, when I started to do it, I felt terrible shame and that shame made me hide it from everyone, in my closet.

Derrick and I had to part ways for a portion of the summer while I went off to summer camp. It was a romantic goodbye of staying up all night at my house and making out, discussing our love and intensity of our feelings. Even while gone, our letters were lengthy professions of feelings: “I love you times infinity” he wrote and followed that with “I miss you so much. It’s hard to explain my feelings. I just can’t wait for you to come home.”

But other things were happening, which I would later discover when I came home…10 pounds heavier than when I left. Mind you, ten pounds that were likely related to growing and puberty more than anything else. After all, I was barely 14.

 

When I returned, everything was different. As we approached starting high school, Derrick pressured me to go beyond my limited second base (which I didn’t do), and my friends had started drinking and hanging out with upperclassmen. I was ill equipped for dealing with these changes. 

Then—BAM!

Within the first three weeks of high school, I lost my entire friend group (including Michelle and Stacy), Derrick (boyfriend of six months at that point, which is a lifetime at fourteen), the class presidential election, and my status as the most Popular Girl in my grade. Oh, and here was the worst crime of them all: gaining more weight.

 

Derrick even cited that as one of the many reasons he felt we should break up. As in, “You got fat…and you won’t fuck me, so I had to fuck someone else.” Ok, I might have conflated two conversations in that last part, but these were the reasons he gave for why he dumped me.

 

People who once came out of the halls of sixth grade, Cluster 1, to congratulate me on overthrowing The Witch Christie P now were taunting me. There was Jimmy L, who regularly yelled down the hallway, “Hey Hannah why don’t you lose some weight?” 

Ironically, said Jimmy, 3 years later, on New Years Eve 1992, would be kind enough to pick me and my date up that evening on a deserted road by the beach because I had gotten my car (actually my dad’s brand new Toyota Cressida, remember those?) stuck in the sand. Life is weird in a small town, Enemies and Antagonists can become friends so quickly. Especially if the reason they are your antagonist was because you were Fat and now you are Thin.

Side note that isn’t really an aside: Derrick was the type of boyfriend who stole a The Smiths cassette and ten dollars from me and put both in a card as my fourteenth birthday gift. He thought it was funny when I opened it and was confused, recognizing the scratches on the cassette and even the folded up ten dollar bill. He was also the kind of boyfriend who randomly punched one of those two best friends, who would eventually abandon me for unknown reasons, in the foot because it was sticking out as he walked by her. Was this an eventual factor in the rupture of our friendship? When she and I reunited around our ten year reunion, this story never came up. She, in fact, apologized to me for “not being a good friend”, so who knows!

By week four of high school, Michelle and Stacy still hated me, and the entire popular group had iced me out. To this day, the only crimes I am aware of that I did commit were getting Fat, not Hooking Up with guys, and not Drinking. Auditioning for the school play definitely didn’t help either. Though the move would prove to be a smart one ultimately, as I went on to star in many of the school plays for the rest of high school.

So back to week four of high school: Derrick asked me to “go back out with him” as the kids said in those days, and due to the winner of the class election forfeiting the title (“it was just a joke,” This Person said), I became class president. Though there was a third—recall former bully Christie P?— running as president who had come in last.

By the way, that person who forfeited was (drum roll) Derrick, who was still my boyfriend at the time he ran against me.

Take a breath and stay with me:

By week five, I was in direct conflict with all of the student council about the class float for homecoming because I had taken the advice of our class advisor to make it a Halloween/Ghost Busters theme, but no one else agreed with it. Yet, no one else had any ideas, and we were running out of time (we haven’t processed this one yet at any of the reunions, so stay tuned for that one). Then, Derrick dumped me (again). This time was public, in the hallway, via his best friend who smelled of rotting chicken soup and had flaming red hair that was in that skater hair style of hanging in an awful curtain that hid most of his face. When walked his head was held in such a way he looked like Quasimodo.By the way, the day of the dumping also happened to be our official six month anniversary (thank you to all of my diaries for the accuracy of this memory).

Said best friend, who I would later be referred to as Kevin McManiac (his name was Kevin McSomethingOrOther), approached me in the freshmen hallway on the Monday of week five. He stopped just inches from my locker and announced: “Derrick says you’re dumped.” Then threw a watch I had gifted Derrick just a few weeks before for his birthday. “And here’s your gay watch.” Then he walked away, wafting rotted chicken smell in his wake. Remember, this is the early nineties (a period in history when microaggressions were at their finest, and when gay was a substitute for lame.) 

 

And this was only September.

Decades later, at our twenty year high school reunion when I retold this election story to a large group of former classmates, many of whom were the Popular Kids Who Iced Me Out and the rest were, as we now refer to ourselves, The Revenge of The Nerds crew. PKWIMO didn’t recalled it. However, TROTN crew did recall it with great empathy (no surprise!).

By the way, Bad Boyfriend Derrick, never showed up at any of these reunions. However, he sent me a weird and kind of flirty DM on Facebook in 2012 and acted as if we were old pals. 

We were not, and we will never be. 

The epitome of not cool. 9th grade. April 1990

By October of freshman year, I was completely iced out of The Popular Group that I had been so intertwined with for four years, which is a lifetime—roughly a fourth of my life so far!

The only people who talked to me at this point were the upperclassmen from theater and the private school kids who never knew me from my—so-called—skinny, popular years. 

 

By November, I was in tech week for the production of Born Yesterday, my first high school theater performance. The only freshmen in the cast, I was a manicurist with the simple line of “Yes, sir!” while pretending to file senior Tony H.’s nails. Tony H. was a sweetheart but, man, could he belt out his character Harry Brock’s sexist lines to “dumb blond Billie” played by Tony’s actual girlfriend. Fun fact: They would go on to get married and have two kids. 

Anyway, while on stage during tech week, unbeknownst to me, the lighting guy, a junior named Nate, had a crush on me and would later tell me he had intentionally shined the spotlight directly on me during my one and only scene. By mid-week, he commissioned his “friend”, a girl named Amy, who was the stage manager to tell me that he wanted to take me on a date. Though the hairs on the back of my neck prickled from the similarity that this echoed of the love triangles of yesteryear a la Christie P./ Matt B./ Pat S., I ignored the creepy foreshadowing. 

I shouldn’t have.

It turned into a bigger mess than my middle school drama ever could have been!

Nate and I went out on some dates, which initially impressed me (and my mother!). Most memorable was the dinner at a local pub in Newport followed by a performance of Othello at Newport Play House. The performance was unremarkable in my memory but what does stand out is that when Nate came to the house to retrieve me for this date. My mother invited him inside only to tell him about her performance as a tap dancing sailor in The Newport Play House’s 1974 production of Anything Goes. “I was eight months pregnant with Hannie!” She told him, using the awful nickname my family insisted suited me (it does not!).  Mom then proceeded to stand up right in front of where Nate sat awkwardly on our couch, which was overly stuffed with too many decorative pillows, and demonstrate how she could still Shuffle Off to Buffalo.

And he still asked me out again after that.

 

But alas, I was still hung up on ole Derrick. Yeah, remember him? I was still clinging to hope via his post-break up, vulgar, prank phone calls that were nightly at this point. “Whore! Slut! Bitch” he would yell when I would finally pick up the phone. The many benefits of having my own phone line—easily accessible to asshole ex-boyfriends. 

Anyway, Nate was sweet, but I was still in love with my captor, so-to-speak or, as we say in my biz, “abuser”. Not only that, Nate seemed so old, so adult as a junior to my 9th grade self. So when he drove me out to Purgatory Chasm to give me what would become the best mixtape I ever received (Depeche Mode’s Somebody?! The Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry!?) and asked me to be his girlfriend, I had to end it.

The very next day Amy (now the hair on the back of my neck really stood up!) accosted me in school at my locker. “What kind of slut are you? Did you know you gave him his first kiss? Then, you dump him?” She snarled, her cheeks inflamed with red splotches. She screamed at me that I deserved to be punched in the face and that she would gladly be the one to do it.

 

Though she did not punch me in the face, she spent the rest of the week giving me nasty letters about my slutty ways. She called me a “tease” as I passed her in the hallway.  Meanwhile, Nate simply ignored me. The show was over by this point, so we didn’t have to see each other any more.

 

In an abrupt turn of events Nate started to hang out with another girl who was in his grade, and they started to date. Amy, in my memory, vanished. I don’t know how her harassment of me ended. But before Christmas break, it was over.

My theater career took off after this and sophomore year, Nate and I played husband and wife in our production of 12th Night.

And, I went on to briefly date his younger brother my junior year!

At this point, overt bullying basically ended, but what happened next, in some ways, was a lot worse.

Read Part 4: Invisible

Disclaimer: This is a several-part piece that talks about my most painful experiences in my childhood and teens years with bullying. In order to (emotionally) feel safe sharing these stories, some names have been changed as well as minor details. As a woman in my late forties, who has battled (for decades)—as many women do—with myself over whether or not I have the right or deserve to speak my personal truth and perspective on events that happened to me, I’ve decided to not allow that inner battle or my fears to stop me. Who knows if anyone will read this. Who knows if anyone who reads this will be someone from my past who participated, witnessed or knew about these events. And, who knows if anyone will care. I do know that someone out there will relate. That my story will connect with someone. So here are my true stories of bullying and the effects they had on me.