Confession

I confess,  I was a "mean girl"  at least twice in my life.  You would think it would have been in St. Louis where I was feeling pretty confident in myself, but confidence does not necessarily breed meanness.  Mean girls are not created through feeling good about yourself.  They are created through jealousy and fear of losing status.  The one thing necessary is feeling of a certain level of power. 

I made it through the remainder of fifth grade and started to feel better about myself that summer.  I started camp at MoVal and was actually pretty popular and accepted there.  I was immersed in church choir and youth groups which further help me like myself a little more.  When 6th grade rolled around, I found myself feeling more confident around the other kids.  I could actually notice them look at my with new respect when I wasn't being a bragging dweeb. 

However, my ego was still pretty fragile and easily bruised.  It didn't take much for me to be  a mean girl.

My old boss used to have terrific hissy fits about "self esteem".   Any time someone used the term he would rant about how research showed that self esteem has nothing to do with positive behavior and that the worst criminals can base their self esteem on being the best safecracker or being able to beat up the most people.  Within a definition of self esteem being how you rate yourself against others and how great you are at accomplishing tasks, that is pretty true.  There is plenty of research to show that we have gone way overboard in thinking we can't let kids face failure for fear of hurting their ability to achieve.  But it is absolutely true that very bad choices can come from a place of feeling incompetent and uncomfortable in one's own skin.

I, (along with actual researchers and scholars, of course) have come to realize that we're not talking about self esteem in those cases.  We're talking about shame.  Have you ever done something stupid and felt guilty about it?  Guilt is a good thing. It keeps you from repeating behaviors.  Stop me if I've told this story before...or just skip it or something...  Once I was in Michael's craft store.  I picked up some little wood beads for 99 cents and stuck them in the cart.  I got a few other things and when I went to check out, they weren't there.  Bummer,  I must have dropped them  When I got to the car and reached into my purse for my keys, low and behold, there were the beads.  I shoplifted them.  Oops!  I was a little embarrassed and felt a twinge of guilt!  (not enough to go back and pay for them, necessarily.  What's 99 cents to a gigantic, overpriced corporation - That's a rationalization.  Gotta use those, occasionally)  All of that to say, guilt is feeling bad about something you have done, a behavior or action.  Shame is a feeling that you are a bad person.  I am not a bad person because I accidently shoplifted from Michael's.  It was an accidental (I swear) bad behavior.   But somehow, when I was a kid, I got the idea that my right to take up space in the universe was directly tied to my ability to seen as intelligent and to get good grades.  Mom, Dad, I blame it all on you!  No, my parents did the best they could and raised us well.  I think this was a built-in, comes-standard-with- this-kid trait that was exacerbated by life circumstance.  It's nothing a little intensive psychotherapy couldn't take care of...

So I think shame is at the root of my mean girl behavior because it has absolutely nothing to do with the person I was mean to.

In six grade, my teacher was also the music teacher.  She was great.  But, there was another teacher who we may have had for math.  I don't remember why, but a few of us were hanging out in his room at recess.  My dear friend Carole, my rescuer and confidant, was usually part of this group, but for some reason was not in the room that day.  How on earth the teacher was talking about this I cannot explain, but at some point he told use that Carole was super smart.  The rest of us were fine students but Carole was head and shoulder smarter than the rest of us.  Now, Carole IS super smart.  Graduated in the top ten in my high school class.  But, I did NOT like being compared unfavorably to anyone! 

It had never occurred to me to be jealous of someone for being smarter than me!  It had certainly never occurred to me to be jealous of Carole!  But my fragile ego was badly bruised that day.  If I had been older, I could have told that teacher that there were all kinds of intelligence and that trying hard has much more to do with academic achievement that inmate intelligence anyway.  If he had said, Carole is just better at achieving and takes more pleasure in trying hard, it wouldn't have cut me to the quick.  Since I was in 6th grade and didn't know what I know now, I couldn't tell him what an asshole I thought he was or how badly he hurt me, so I took it out on the person who least deserved it.  I was mean to Carole!!

Meanness in girls is not the typical bullying that you see in, say Christmas Story.  It isn't making fun or  extorting lunch money.  It's leaving out and backstabbing.  I made it my mission to exclude Carole from sleepovers and to get our other friends to do the same.  It didn't hurt my cause that they were probably jealous of Carole, too!

I do not know how long this went on, but since there are lots of reasons to be jealous of Carole, it may have been a while!  Back at the parsonage, my dad got wind of Carole's hurt feeling.  Doesn't take long for that kind of thing to get through to a minister.  Since Carole and her family were good church members, I am sure there were adult conversations and keen behavioral observations and eventually my dad ask me what was going on between me and Carole.  I had an epiphany moment, and realized that my being mean to Carole A) had nothing to do with how I actually felt about her and B)  I actually hurt her feelings and C), being mean didn't make me smarter than her!

I'm pretty sure I called her up that day to arrange a sleep over and she never said anything to me or asked me why I was so mean to her!  She is amazing! 

I just have to say that Carole is still one of my favorite people and that I think getting through tough times together makes a friendship that much ore special.  Here's to you, Carole.  Now let me explain about the 7th grade locker fiasco...