-begin: page 1 abridged galateialanademeter story v1.1-

Subject: and so my story begins.

and so ill stay up late, write another tragedy.
but this one may take a while, so ill stop all this silly poetry and start again with the warped prose.

well there i was, in third grade. there was a teacher named mrs bergin. she was pretty neat, the gem of the school. the school was saint barts, and i was still innocent. that was my time. the last time i had left to be innocent and happy. there were only kids that i knew there. liz and bridget and beth and ginny and emily and sarah and alice(pronounced elise) and courtney and gretchen and kelly and katie and liegh. and there were guys, charles and matt and a.j. and chris and paul and bobby. there were always more girls than guys in our class. and we were relatively happy in our little sheltered worlds. we were still young, and the only thing that governed our popularity was how nice were our boxers that we wore under our skirts. the school didnt know this but i was relieved that this trend caught on, since even then i didnt wear underwear, and jumpers are revealing when you jump rope. so we laughed and played. and i wasnt the most athletic person, but when you dodge balls, it is much more fun and less active than running. dont say it.

so kindergarten until third grade passed with little more pain than a couple of scraped knees. and when fourth grade came i thought little of it. but there were new people in the class then. the only one that mattered was victoria woods-trujillo.

i guess that was how it was spelled. she was one of the unlucky children whose parents had split up. and that was all anyone would say about her home life. when she came into the school, there was a bunch of kids who had played together for years and there was little room for her to make an appearance. so she carved a hole in our little class. her first actions were to make room for herself by worming her way in with the more popular kids. there were several of them. mostly the kube sisters, courtney and gretchen, and also liz and bridget. they were probably the richest of them. and so when she was on good terms with them, she began to wage war.

so she picked me.

i dont know why she picked me, i never said an unkind word to her, and i never hurt her in any way, and maybe that is just why i got picked. i was an easy victim. she could hurt me cuz i was not used to standing up for my self. and the only one i had ever had to fight with was my brother. and those fights were pretty much i would insult him and he would pulverize me. i was completely unprepared for the kind of war that several preteen girls could wage. first there was the kind of warfare that no child can combat, the subtle kind. i was not ready for someone to start messing with my head. there was no warning that anyone would come out of the blue and start talking about me behind my back. this was how it started with small insults and joking commentary. and i thought that this was just some friendly ribbing. there was no real indication that it was malice. the girls were all together standing in their little groups and they started to talk more and to play less and there was much talk about what the boys in the class were doing. katie, who was never all that cruel to me, was good friends with matt, and they were the closest thing to a couple that you could get in the fourth grade. and of course there was aj. he was pretty much the cutest thing in the school. and there was an air of mystery about him, since he was into all of the hard rock and heavy metal. he was ahead of the rest of the class, since he was at least above the debbie gibson mentality of the late eighties. he was the be all and end all to liz. and she wanted to fuck him every way to sunday, that is if she knew what it was she would have. ok, i admit it i also thought he was cute. in a very dark and appealing sort of way. he was the kind of kid that would have listened to good music, and i appreciated that even then. and so the year went on, with many of the girls talking about me, and of course i knew they were saying things, but for a while i didnt think about it.

fifth grade came and there was more interest in boys and less in anything else. there were few of us who actually had a crush, and none who would admit it, even though with liz it was obvious. and aj had no intention of dating her. and i think one of the kube sisters liked him too, but there was also no chance there either. i talked to him sometimes, but he was the first to mention that obnoxious little fact that since i was adopted i was technically a bastard. i think that someone talked to him about it cuz he dropped it. and then it got picked up by the girls. the girls were more daring this year, and they decided that it was open season on eileen. there was a free for all on my self confidence. the remarks ranged from: "you have cockroaches in your hair, to such inane comments as: "you suck, you dont have a phone in your room, whats the matter, are your parents so poor that they cant even afford a phone?"

the comments werent so biting that i couldnt handle them, it was their mannerisms. they would stand in a circle at one corner of the playground and huddle. i was never allowed into the huddle. occasionally they would look over in my direction and laugh. the way they tore me down was not to insult me directly, although they did that as well, but rather to imply that they were saying things that were even worse behind my back. it worked well. and then the notes started passing. the same old one, three oclock, on the hill. < the hill was the upper field used for soccer.> be there or be a loser. youre a loser either way. ill beat your brains in. sit and rotate. you suck balls. i cant believe youre still here you stupid bitch. and the notes were not all, since they would occasionally prank call my house. not often, but sometimes they would call and ask if i was home. when my parents or i said yes, they said, i thought so, eileen doesnt have a life, so how could she be anywhere else.

and so, i told my parents.

i never complained at school, i was no snitch.

and so mother talked to me.

vicki has a hard life.

she doesnt really have a father, and theres a lot of sadness in her house.
shes got a lot of problems.

just try to get along with her, eventually she will see that you like her and that you want to be her friend.

turn the other cheek.

this, of course, did not work. ...and believe me i tried. i tried everything i could to get her to be my friend. i was so sickeningly nice to her that anyone else would have shot me, but she was enjoying herself too much to stop me.

and so sixth grade came and my parents had given me the choice to stay in saint barts, or to go to pyle. i figured, if my old friends in my own school didnt like me, strangers would be even worse. so i stayed there. and the only friends that i had that year were ralph the mouse, and mario and pivot, the snakes. mr bricker liked me, since i wasnt afraid to hold the snakes, and i even enjoyed feeding them. but i remember very little about that year. i would come home and watch tv all day. i beat the legend of zelda twenty times that year. and the amount of time that i played tetris was absolutely insane. but i could get up to two hundred lines, which is nearly impossible. i even got to the point where i could watch the brady bunch, they had the times of their lives, and no problems. so why do people hate them?

and the worst thing is, i cant remember much of that year. i had only one victory that year. and it was at the end. vicki decided finally to take some action against me. she found me on a part of the playground that was fairly far from the lunch ladies. and she called me a fucking bitch, and slapped me.

so of course, since she had only an older sister, she didnt hurt me much.

i had an older brother.
she got slapped back, and she nearly spit out some teeth since i smacked her with my fist. the whole thing was the most i had ever stuck up for myself, and i thought that i had finally gotten something out of my system.

they didnt want me back the next year.

and i didnt want them.

seventh grade is also foggy, in the same way that eighth through the rest of highschool were as well. i was so completely tucked into what was left of my personal armor that i wouldnt let myself come out. and my mind was what was mostly tucked in. and that took years to get out again. one of my teachers told my parents that i was depressed, but they said no, not their child. if i was blind, then my parents were deaf dumb blind and paralyzed. and so ends my bitter story of fourth fifth and sixth grade. next comes dylan, and that one ends badly too, and of course the story of chris ends badly, and of course the story of mark, and that ends sort of neutral in a bad sort of way, but that is the only one that didnt leave a mark on me really. well, not at the end, but it may have in the middle.

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