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In middle school there was a girl from my gym class whose face was badly scarred from a fire. She walked around like nothing was different about her but she always seemed to be alone too.
One day she got in a disagreement with someone during class and they traded arguments and insults back and forth like kids do when they’re fighting.
Finally she got the upper hand in the argument and turned back to go to her locker, victorious. But as she was walking away the other person said slowly and with deliberate enunciation: ‘Burnt bitch.’ You could almost see the t’s in each word suddenly sticking like daggers out of her back.
The whole locker room fell silent right away and there was even someone who gasped in the background.
Only today when I was thinking back on this did I realize that she was so close that she must have heard everything. She never looked back or showed any reaction, but that tells it all doesn’t it?
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Just gotta say…mean people suck. Perhaps she did hear what was said…the individual who made the remark will pay for that in some way, if she hasn’t already. I mean, who does that?? Kids are ruthless!
Hi Julie,
Thanks for the comment. Yeah it was a really shocking thing to hear, even at that age we all knew that the girl who threw the insult had crossed a line that shouldn’t ever be crossed.
Ouch….
It’s amazing how we can utterly crush someone with just the right words at just the right time:/ The girl who resorted to calling the girl with facial scars “burnt bitch” must have been hurt so badly by whatever was said to her that she decided to use the most devastating insult in her arsenal.
I think that anyone lucky enough to survive the many cruelties of adolesence has at some point or other longed to wield the silencing power of the perfect crippling insult…. and there’s nothing like a low blow to guarantee victory.
I pity the girl in this story whose face was scarred; I also pity the girl who, with all the finesse of a true coward, went for the low blow.
Althea,
Thanks for your comment. This incident has always surfaced in my mind regularly over the years, it left that much of an impression (middle school was a long time ago lol).
I guess it stuck with me because it was really shocking to see such a disproportionate response of cruelty to what was just a run of the mill argument.
The insult-throwing girl did always seem to be someone who liked to do shocking things for attention so I think that was a factor in her being willing to go way over the line like that. I never thought she was a bad person but after that day I definitely seen her in a different light.
My locker was right across from hers so I heard what happened afterwards. One of her good friends was sitting next to her and said something to the effect of ‘You shouldn’t have done that’ but not in those words. Her friend was embarrassed.
I can only hope that the insult-throwing felt some sort of remorse about it or even made it up to the other girl (okay probably not, but you never know). All I can say is that if I remember that incident after all these years then the girl with the facial scars definitely does.