From the Sunday NYTimes (as I always say, I'm not sure how long the NYT links stay good): mean girls. It's an article about girl vs. girl "aggression" (more frequently taking the form of cattiness or spreading evil rumors) that goes down in junior high schools.

The article made me incredibly sad - brought back some swirling memories of my best friend "dropping" me in 7th grade because she became popular and I wasn't. She actually passed me a note saying she thought it was best if we weren't seen together any more.
I was a mouse then. I accepted it as how things were supposed to be, I tried to still hang with her on weekends (mostly so my parents wouldn't think something was up!).

Now, I would tell her exactly where she could go and exactly what she could do with that note while she was on her way there.

Age is empowering. I'm glad I'm nearly 33 and that I will never have to put up with that junk again.

I don't know if this is entirely permissible, and I will take it down if I get angry letters from the NYT, but here is a quotation I found particularly telling:"When I ask Jessica to explain the rules her clique lives by, she doesn't hesitate. ''O.K.,'' she says happily. ''No 1: clothes. You cannot wear jeans any day but Friday, and you cannot wear a ponytail or sneakers more than once a week. Monday is fancy day -- like black pants or maybe you bust out with a skirt. You want to remind people how cute you are in case they forgot over the weekend... And the rules apply to all of us -- you can't be like, 'Oh, I'm having my period; I'm wearing jeans all week.''' She pauses for a millisecond. ''Like, we had a lot of problems with this one girl. She came to school on a Monday in jeans. So I asked her, 'Why you wearing jeans today?' She said, 'Because I felt like it.' 'Because you felt like it? Did you forget it was a Monday?' 'No.' She says she just doesn't like the confinement. She doesn't want to do this anymore. She's the rebel of the group, and we had to suspend her a couple of times; she wasn't allowed to sit with us at lunch. On that first Monday, she didn't even try; she didn't even catch my eye -- she knew better. But eventually she came back to us, and she was, like, 'I know, I deserved it.""

That last quotation from the former "rebel girl" is what hit me like a punch in the stomach. Why do people do that to themselves? Why did I do that to myself?

All I can say is 1. I'm grateful to be done with that era of my life forever and 2. I'm grateful that I can tell people to go soak their heads (or the same in more colorful language) if they try to pull those kind of fake "rules" on me now.