Susan (not her real name) walked into her 7th-grade homeroom last week sick with anxiety. The 12-year-old was afraid that none of her new classmates would want her for a friend.
She hoped these boys and girls would give her a fresh start. The first day, she went out of her way to blend in. She didn`t joke around, for fear of drawing attention to herself. On the playground, she thought twice before speaking.
”I don`t want anybody mad at me,” she said. ”I`ll do almost anything to keep people from getting mad at me again.”
Since fourth grade, Susan has walked around school as if on eggshells. That year she was stuck, unfairly, with a bad reputation. A mean-spirited girl spread a false rumor that Susan had called the most popular boy in class a bad name. Since Susan did not belong to the cool crowd, she had few defenders. Most of her classmates stopped speaking to her.
”It was awful,” Susan recalled. ”From October until the end of the school year, everyone in school picked on me. No matter how I played in games during recess, I was always called out. On the playground, kids called me
`Fatso` and `Jerk` instead of Susan. The teasing never stopped. I told them over and over I never called that boy a name, but I couldn`t get anyone to believe me.”
Susan spent almost all of that year alone. Nights, she cried to her mother, and then cried herself to sleep. ”The Baby-sitters Club” books took the place of friends. Occasionally a classmate would visit, and then ignore her in school the next day. Susan began to think that there must be something wrong with her for people to dislike her so. She wanted to confide in her teacher, but was afraid of being labeled a tattletale.
”I was so jealous of the kids who were popular,” she said. ”I`d watch them walk down the hall at school, surrounded by bunches of friends, and I`d say to myself, `I wish I could be like her. I wish everybody would like me.`
”
That hasn`t happened, but at least she has a friend again. Near the end of fourth grade, she joined a softball team and became pals with a girl from another school who didn`t know her reputation.
Susan treasures her. There isn`t anything she wouldn`t do for her. She treats her like a princess.
”Most of the popular kids at school take friendship for granted,” Susan said. ”I could teach them some things. It`s too bad for them that they don`t want to know me better. If they did, they`d know what a good friend really is.”
