Teenage girls to be specific. Groups of teenage girls to be even more specific.
I wasn't always afraid. Certainly not when I was one myself so many years ago, but since becoming a socially aware adult I can't help it. Girls are mean and they fight dirty. I've always known this. Now, though, they just seem so much more violent. So much more bold. I cannot shake Reena Virk from my mind and every time her then teenage killer comes back up in the news, my stomach turns again. I can't even read the details anymore. I can't get the image of her 15 year old face out of my mind. And now we have another case of a teenage girl gone wild much closer to home here in Ontario. Eight year old Tori Stafford was led away and possibly killed by an 18 year old teenager with a very sordid and checkered, criminal past. I will likely never forget her tiny face, either. I will not read the details of her murder in the newspaper once it goes to trial simply because it will make me sick. Literally.
I often think back to my early teenage years. I remember Samantha. She was mean. She did things for the thrill of it. She was a bully. She mocked. She poked. She taunted. She threatened. She turned your friends against you. She introduced words and images that her 12 year old classmates should never have learned. She terrorized Karen and encouraged others to do so, too. She made up stories about her, threatened physical harm on her and made her life miserable. Karen was easy prey. She was poor, dirty and shabbily dressed. She lied and lived in an imaginary world. But she was defiant. I'm sure internally it was eating her up but she seemed resilient on the outside. I honestly think she was very smart, even if she did cheat off me a few times. I think she knew that Samantha was a loser and would eventually disappear into nothingness. In all the time I knew Samantha (thankfully only four years) I don't think anyone was immune to her or safe from her ridicule. If I subscribed to Facebook I'd look them both up. In my head I'm imagining that Karen is happy, healthy and living a good life and Samantha isn't even there because she's doing hard time somewhere. In my heart I'm hoping that's the case.
I thought about Samantha and Karen a while ago after I walked through my neighbourhood pushing Ingrid in her stroller. It was about 2:30 and the school buses had just finished dropping off all the neighbourhood latch key kids. As I walked down the street I spied a trio of teenage girls. They were like little pixies with their long, blonde hair fluttering down their backs, their fashionable Ugg boots pulled up over their tight jeans, their coats swaying side to side from their hip tossing swaggers. From a distance they looked beautiful... the stuff of a teenage boy's dreams. They were cool. The kind of cool that might, one day, lead them to pick up a cigarette.
Walking in front of them was a lone teenage boy. One who I imagined went home by himself, drank milk straight from the carton, let the dog out and went up to his bedroom to play Nintendo until his parents arrived home from work. The kind of boy who didn't cause any trouble at all. But he was in trouble. The dream girls had his number and they were phoning it in. They shouted at him. When he didn't give them the attention they were so obviously looking for, they shouted louder.
"How come you won't talk to us?"
"It's okay. We'll get you tomorrow in class!"
"We know where you live!"
Finally, mercifully, he turned onto his street and they didn't follow. Instead, they marched on in front of me. The ring leader walked, typically, in the middle. Her followers flanked her on each side. When she flipped the bird at passing cars so, too, did her sheep. When she stopped, she didn't stop alone. When she loudly made fun of another teen passing them in the opposite direction, it was in stereo. Observing their behaviour made me nervous. I had this foreboding sense that something was going to happen and I became very afraid. Paranoid. It's that mob mentality thing. I had visions of them rushing at me and knocking over Ingrid in her stroller just for fun, or throwing snowballs at us (it was February). So I crossed the street. I looked down at my sleeping baby and I silently begged and secretly prayed that she would neither fall prey to bullies like these nor become a bully herself.
Fortunately, I realize that no amount of begging and praying is going to help. Derek and I are just going to have to raise this child right. It is our responsibility to teach her what is right and what is wrong, acceptable and unacceptable, kind and unkind. It is my wish that she will have the internal fortitude to stand by and defend her beliefs.
How the hell am I going to teach her that?