Archive for October, 2009

by Emily Willingham
Written at Age 17
Age 13 at the Time

Well, they told to do this first-day-at-school thing and write about the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. We’re living in the best time of our lives, the teacher said, and one day, we’ll look back on this paper and realize that. Right now all I can think of is how bad everything is, so I’m gonna write about the worst thing that ever happened to me instead. The teacher can’t do anything about it. Maybe the worst time was my best time. Maybe my stupid life has been that bad. How would she know anyway? Teachers hardly ever know the first thing about how terrible life is, and I think they’re some of the ones who make it that way. I had this one teacher who always said, “Life isn’t fair.” I always wanted to point out that she wasn’t helping any.

So I went to boarding school last year when I was thirteen. That’s when all the worst part of my life began. Before that, everything was fine –- I even liked my parents and my little brother. Now we fight a lot. Especially me and my brother, but we always fought, just not as much.

There was a meeting one night where all the students in my dorm met each other, but the only important ones that mattered to the worst part of my life were Jessica, Tiffanie, and Lita Mary Starr. These three girls weren’t the really popular ones, like all the blonde girls from Dallas, and they weren’t the nerdy little ones like me. They were just kinda in-betweens, and I guess they didn’t like it there.

One thing I noticed at that meeting was that everyone in the dorm knew I had gotten a scholarship. They all knew it; they’d come up to me and go, “Aren’t you the one that got the scholarship? You must be smart.” And I’d say, just as a joke, “No, just poor.”

Evidently, a lot of these girls took that to heart and kinda stayed away from me, especially when they found out that my closest family member in Who’s Who was my third cousin twice removed, and my dad had gone to public school. I didn’t even know that was bad. I’ve been going to public school all my life, except for that one year, and it’s just as good, except you have to write dumb papers like “The Best Time of My Life,” plus all the people aren’t so stuck up.

Now I’m going to skip to the really worst part of my life, because all the stuff in between was OK and not very interesting. Just know that during that time, I was starting to hate almost everyone in the world because they were all so catty and mean. Sometimes, just because I hadn’t heard of some place called “Brinn Mar,”—people in Waco don’t talk about places like Brinn Mar, they talk about Dallas, or Houston.

Anyway, along about November, these three girls I just talked about got up a little “joke” against me. Personally, I don’t know how they mustered up enough brains between them to think of it, but they did. It was like this: right next to our dorm, we had this teacher who sold candy for what they call the Martin Luther King Fund. I had been visiting this quite often, in support, and I was getting kinda fat and my skin wasn’t looking too good, anyway, I went there a lot. One Sunday, I got my last dollar and went to get a Snickers. On my way back, I saw Lita Mary Starr walking toward me like she was on her way to buy candy. Well, I said “Hello” and didn’t think much of it, even when she smirked at me because she always smirked at me. I went back to my room to read this Agatha Christie I’d just checked out. Ten minutes later, Tiffanie came knocking on my door, so I let her in, even though I didn’t want to. I have a really hard time being outright rude, even though Tiffanie didn’t. She went straight to my jewelry box, where I always kept my money, asking if she could borrow some change. I said sure, but she just poked her fat face in and then banged down the lid and ran out of the room.

This got me wondering, so I stuck my head out of my room just in time to catch the three of them, Jessica, Tiffanie, and Lita Mary, running out the door, kinda giggling. I knew that something was up; once they stuck a whole load of someone else’s wash from the dryer in my bottom drawer, hoping I’d get into trouble for stealing it, but I found it and put it back.

Anyway, I followed them, and just as I was coming around the side of the dorm, they were coming toward me. Tiffanie pointed at me and said something like, “You’re up —- creek you little —–.” “Oh, Lord,” I thought, “here we go.” She pudged over to me, waving this damned dollar bill in my face (sorry, Mom). “You see this,” she said. “Just before you stole this, I wrote on it – see? Right there.” I looked down at the dollar and there were these words on it – I don’t remember exactly what it said because I was feeling all hurt and my throat felt like it might bust. I tried to say something like, “I didn’t take your stupid dollar,” but I couldn’t. I just started crying like a little kid. Tiffanie waved it in my face. “All of us,” she pointed at Lita Mary and Jessica, “saw me write this on this dollar, and we know you stole it because Lita just saw you coming back from Mr. Preston’s.” Mr. Preston was the teacher selling the Martin Luther King Fund candy. “We went to Mr. Preston’s and looked, and this dollar was on top of the money in his box. You took it, and I’m going to the headmaster.”

Well, I didn’t do anything right away. I just went to my room and sat on my bed, wondering if I had gone unconscious or something and taken that dollar or maybe I had two people in me. I don’t know why I was wondering all that because I just knew all along that Tiffanie was lying. I knew why Lita Mary Starr had walked by me when I was coming back with my Snickers.

Tiffanie got me in front of the Student Discipline Committee, all right, but they didn’t believe her or didn’t believe her enough, and didn’t give me any punishment. Except that it didn’t matter because the whole school though I stole and I had to live the rest of the year with people calling me “thief.” One girl from my dorm even told the whole story, with me as the thief, on the bus coming back from a town trip one night. She talked really loud, and I could hear her from the back of the bus. I wouldn’t even borrow anyone’s clothes, even though everyone did that, in case they might “forget” and think I stole them.

One day, I was puttering around the library when I ran into Lita Mary Starr. She was always the nicest of the witches to me, even though it was a totally two-faced nice. I looked at her for a second, and all of a sudden, this question fell out of my mouth, almost before I had time to think of it. “Why did you do that to me, Lita?” And all she did was look kinda uncomfortable and say, “I don’t know.” She didn’t know. How could somebody not know why they do a thing?

Well, I think I’m going to be better off in public school from now on because no one gets scholarships to make people think they’re poor or needy and some of the people even get free lunch and no one cares. Plus you don’t get accused of stealing because everyone has lockers with locks and we all live in different houses. That’s the best part of public school. Getting to go home separate from everyone else. Where your parents know you’re not a thief, no matter what stupid girls say. It’s the worst part of the best time of your life, and it’s better to go home, even if you have a little brother.

Originally published on: The Big Girl Blog: Tales of a Plus Size Princess in New York City
By: CeCe Olisa
Age 9 at the time

When I was younger I would hear stories about kids being teased because of their weight.

When I would hear those stories, I would think about how awful it was for those kids who were made fun of, but I would also wonder what made me different because, although I was a big kid, those things didn’t really happen to me.

At age nine I was best friends with the most popular girls in the fourth grade. The leader of our group was Riley Baker. Riley was beautiful, all the boys were in love with her and she had the type of personality that made you want to do whatever she said. We called ourselves the Red Sisters because of a blood oath she convinced us to take one day after school.

If Riley was the queen of the fourth grade, recess was when she held court. Everyday after we shared our goldfish crackers, sandwiches and caprisuns we would roam the playground. We felt we were too old to play on the jungle gym like the 2nd and 3rd graders but we also knew we were too young to make our way over to the softball field where the 7th and 8th graders hung out.

So we walked… waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, Riley would make something happen. Sometimes it was flirting with boys, sometimes it was lying on the grass listening to Nirvana on her Walkman. Then there were the afternoons when Riley’s claws would come out. There were two girls that she hated and both were on the chubby side. If Riley crossed paths with either of these girls, the Red Sisters would stand in silence as Riley tore into them; criticizing their clothes, their bodies, their hair and anything else she could think of. The Red Sisters never added any insults, we were actually cool with both of the chubby girls when Riley wasn’t around, but our silence spoke volumes.

These girls had it rough because if they cried it would only bring them more negative attention. On the other hand, when one of the girls got fed up and told a teacher what Riley was doing to her, it was even worse. Riley was put into detention for 3 days and gave the Red Sisters strict orders to pretend the girl didn’t exist.

I can remember feeling bad for the girls but feeling relieved that Riley was my friend. I also remember feeling confused because I knew that I was actually bigger than both of these girls who were being teased about their weight. I knew it was twisted, but I was grateful that Riley and the other girls looked past my size and still allowed me to be a Red Sister.

When Riley returned from her stint in detention, we went back to sandwiches, goldfish crackers and caprisuns followed by walks, boys and Nirvana. Riley had a new boyfriend and hadn’t harassed anyone in a while so things felt pretty normal. One day, we decided to roam a little further across the school yard and found ourselves chatting in front of a brick wall outside of the 6th graders classrooms. We were waiting for something to happen, but as usual, nothing did.

The bell rang, signaling the end of recess. We all stood up to head back to class, the other Red Sisters turned the corner and Riley, who was in front of me, abruptly turned around. Suddenly it was just the two of us standing against the brick wall.

“You need to lose weight,” she said.

I felt like she had punched me in the stomach.

“I-I… I know,” I stammered.

I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. I wanted to tell someone, but what was the point? I wasn’t sure if I was going to have to plead for my place as a Red Sister, but before I could think of anything to say, Riley turned on her heel and headed back to class.

I stood against the brick wall, alone.

“Celeste…”

I turned around and Mrs. Arcane the 6th grade history teacher had her head poked out of her door.

“Yes, Mrs. Arcane?” I said, nervously wondering if she’d overheard what Riley said to me.

She took a deep breath “You know, with friends like that… you don’t need enemies.”