A Pile of Shit

When I was a senior in high school, a mean girl*  made a brownie look like a pile of shit  and put it in my locker. She and a snickering group of girls then waited and watched. 

I went to a small Christian high school. Our senior class only had 24 students, the whole school, grades 8-12, had probably less than 300 total. The school was round—dubbed the Vernadome—with classrooms all around the outside, surrounding an indoor basketball court and a stage. 

It’s like someone started to build a typical high school, started with the gym and then gave up, slapped on some rooms, put a dome over it and called it a day. 

It was as weird as you’re picturing. 

Anyway, shit brownie. 

All the lockers were inside, on either side of the basketball court, the entirety of the school filing into the space between classes, so that when I opened my locker…well, you get it. 

The girls laughed and laughed as I took in the “shit” neatly placed atop the contents of my locker. I had to figure out how to get it out without actually picking it up, lest the joke was truly on me and it had been real poop. Good one. 

I have no idea why I was the target of their cruelty that day, but I never forgot it, clearly. It just goes to show how a seemingly harmless prank can affect someone so deeply. I had been bullied when I was younger, so all of those long forgotten feelings and all of those scabbed over wounds opened up in that moment. But she didn’t know that, nor did she give a shit…wait. 

People will show their true colors by their actions, even when “it’s just a joke,” or “I was just kidding.” Especially then. 

Bullies will always be the real pieces of .

It costs nothing to be kind. 

*the OG draft of this blog included the girl’s name, but I edited it out, because it doesn’t really matter now, does it?