OS editor Emily has suggested we try to contact our childhood bullies for an interview. Not gonna happen, dear Emily. I wouldn’t give that woman the time of day, nor would I give her the satisfaction of knowing I still entertain thoughts of her cruelty in my old age. I will, however, conduct such an interview in the confines of my wicked imagination:
L: Hello, Shirley. I’m sure you remember me, since I occupied so much of your time in high school. You seemed to be able to spot me in those maze-like hallways amidst all 4,000 of the students milling about between classes. Although we never exchanged so much as an introduction to each other – ever—you made it your business to actively hate my teenaged guts for reasons I can only surmise.
Shirley: That was a long time ago, L. We were just kids. I was mad at you because I thought Aaron was my boyfriend until he met you and dumped me. I knew it was because I am dark and you aren’t. Boys in those days never preferred us dark-skinned girls if they could get a light-skinned one to pay attention to them.
L: Okay, let’s say I get that. Wouldn’t it have made more sense for you to be angry with Aaron? He was the one who did the dumping. I didn’t even know you existed, so I couldn’t have known you had claimed Aaron for your one and only. Why hate me?
Shirley: That’s a good point, but we are in our sixties now. Like I said, we were just kids. I was jealous and didn’t have the sense I have now.
L: So how long did it take you to realize I had absolutely nothing to do with the color of my skin…or yours, for that matter?
Shirley: Look, L. I am still the same dark and you are still the same light. Nothing has changed. Black men still gravitate to you high-yella bitches, especially when they get a little success. It gets old.
L: I know you were the one behind all the plots to ambush me in the park after school. Someone would tell me about it every time. “They are going to kick your ass,” she’d say. It must have really pissed you off when I would show up in the park with my posse of boys to protect me from your violence.
Shirley: It sure did. It made me feel like your were just rubbing it in. Those boys would protect you as if you were their sister or something. I could never understand why. They wouldn’t have done that for me.
L: That had nothing to do with my skin, Shirley. I was just nice to them. I tried to be nice to everyone, trying to compensate for all the nastiness you and your girls were sending my way, I suppose. And I never threatened to kick anybody’s ass. It just wasn’t my way.
Shirley: You thought you were so smart.
L: How would you know what I thought, Shirley? You never once even spoke to me.
Shirley: Are you going to deny that your name was on the honor roll every time we got report cards? Are you going to deny you were elected to the National Honor Society? Weren’t you in the Plus Thirty?
L: That’s all true, but how is that evidence of the fact that I “thought I was so smart?”
Shirley: I guess it’s not. But no other African American in school was doing those things. It just wasn’t cool.
L: Did you have kids, Shirley?
Shirley: Yes, I have three. A boy and two girls.
L: And are they cool?
Shirley: (laughing) I don’t know how “cool” they are. They all went to private schools, so they were probably considered geeks in the neighborhood.
L: Exactly.
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