THE MEAN FRIEND

Were you the mean friend in high school? Did you say, unforgivably, to some boy obviously interested in you and even more scared to death of you, "don't even look at me."
I wasn't the mean friend. But I also wasn't the girl that all mean friends verbally punched and kicked either. Granted, there were times when, for some unknown reason, my friends would decide they weren't eating lunch with me one day. Or, they'd all wear a certain color and forget to tell me so I didn't fit in. But I think that's the usual fare for junior high and high school.
What I do know intimately are the results of those terrible days where I felt like an outsider in every respect. That hollow feeling; seeing the world in a blur where everything sounds like I was listening with my head in a bucket of water - those feelings I hope NEVER to cause in someone else. Now I try to remember everyone's birthday. I try to let everyone know they are welcome at lunch, or a party or my house. If I accomplish only one thing in my lifetime, it will be to avoid making someone else's stomach hurt the way mine did on a particularly difficult day in junior high.
Ira Glass, host of This American Life on NPR and the show of the same name on Showtime, did a fabulous story this week entitled, The Allure of the Mean Friend. This is a great listen with clever commentary and great first-hand experience from individuals who were the mean friend or a victim of the mean friend. I giggled; oh how I giggled.

















{isnt' Ira cute!}