Pennies, Fists, & Spit: A Band Name for Bullies

Poster for new documentary about bullying.

“The violence between women is unbelievable. Women try to make each other crawl so that their knees are bleeding.” - Tori Amos

The summer before my freshman year in high school I got on the bad side of some bad girls. The reasons were obscure except a senior boy liked me and not one of them. Thus began 3 years of unchecked aggression that would profoundly change me and also leave me with PTSD over $0.14 and pay phones. Loose change still freaks me the hell out.

High school cafeteria food is always a risky endeavor, but for me it included a physical and mental endurance test. Every day those girls would haul themselves up to the lunchroom overlook area, bring their bags of change and other loose metal objects, and spend the lunch hour pelting me and hurling obscenities.

If you sat within 10 feet there was a possibility of a chipped tooth from a stray penny in your baked beans or an imprint Abe Lincoln in your forehead. Not wanting to become collateral damage people left me plenty of empty space most of the time to stretch out. This is also why, as an adult, I have no problem eating out alone. If you can consume a soy pattie while being called a "stupid worthless bitch" and dodging projectiles you can easily eat Filet Oscar around a pleasant server. Also adults generally do not carry backup debit cards specifically for pelting. Technology win.

Pack of Pathetic
The leader of this collection of fighting, spitting, classless Mean Girls was named Kelly. Kelly was a very big bleach blonde with an attitude and an automobile. The law persisted in letting her drive it in spite of my protests to the contrary.

Kelly's hobbies were french braiding her hair, wearing the same cut off shorts every day, eating, plotting new ways to make me commit suicide, more eating, assembling a gang, and combining verbal and vehicular abuse into an art form. Her most important quality was to rarely do the dirty work herself, so she inspired complete strangers to hate me and hurt me usually thanks to a spectacular combination of lies and bravado. Not even my parent's home was safe from her minions. For a virgin I was apparently having a blast Super Sluttin' it Up. Our garage door became a billboard to my achievements in being a garden implement and/or prostitute.

As time progressed she and her minions realized that the loose change racket, screaming threats out the car window, and garage door defacement wasn't really affecting me anymore. I had stopped crying all the time because it showed weakness and it's not a lot of fun flicking metal at people who ignore you. The Pack of Pathetic were going to have to up their game. In the words of the Poet Laureate of Australia* Miss Olivia Newton John, it was “gonna get physical”.

There was a period of time when spitting in my face was a thing. Then tearing my clothes. Then yanking a decent sized lock of my hair out. I'd get surrounded by a circle of girls and have to push and fight my way free. By junior year I was Jean Claude VanDAMMMN girl! in physical self defense skills. My Super Hero powers were evolving when a girl in my class went to punch me while I was on the pay phone with my parents. In a move I like to believe was really Matrix-y I ducked, she missed my face, and crashed her fist directly into a brick wall. It shattered her arm. I wonder if we are going to talk about that day at our class reunion, if I don't skip it again like I did the last two.

Repression is the New Black
I don't remember all the details of the litany of increasing cruelty. In fact, parts of my bullying experiences were so painful the memories have just faded to black. If you work hard at repression it is possible to bury things so deep they require hypnosis or psychotropic drugs to excavate. I still have photographs my parents took showing my face torn up after another set of nails or another fist. I see it but she looks like my sad and scared little sister, not the strong take-no-prisoners woman I have become.

I'd like to say it is beyond me. It really isn't. My relationship with women is horrible. I haven't been able to trust very many women in my life to be supportive instead of conniving and exploitive. Women can still bully as adults; but not with pennies, spit and fists.

Truthfully, this was hard to write. Most people tend to see their pasts as happier than reality. I've looked at my childhood through a lovely dusty rose filter since I left a year early for college at 17 and have never acknowledged the pain of those years. But bullying and the effects shaped virtually every important decision in my adult life in some form; whom I love, whom I loathe, my career choice, my dating life, friendships and how I feel about myself. It's mostly been a fantastic life, albeit one simmering with a lot just under the surface. I'll confess to having a few too many glasses of champagne and a few too many defense mechanisms in an attempt to wash it away or mask it from view.

I woke up this morning looking like a bad soap opera actress with tears everywhere. I dreamed I was in between two men in my present life that I love very much. We were seated in a movie theater watching scenes from that period. I tried to explain to their shocked and disappointed faces that my life had been complicated and I unintentionally polarize people. It was too late to take back what they knew. It's also too late for me to take back what happened. The only thing left is to own it.

It really does get better...or maybe you just get better at handling it. And happiness is certainly the best revenge.


* Factually inaccurate, but you just know Australians feel that way.