I watched one of those Lifetime Movies for Women today. I was channel surfing and found myself coming back to the movie over and over again. Reluctantly I watched.

I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to take that particular walk down memory lane. The move? Odd Girl Out. I remember those days. I didn’t have friends who turned on me. I didn’t have friends. I had one…my senior year. I spent four years living on the fringe, ostrasized for reasons I mostly didn’t understand.

One scene had her crouched on a toilet while girls stood outside the stall and taunted her with cruel remarks. I spent many a PE period one year crouched on a bench in the changing area, curtain drawn in the stall. I still remember those taunts. “Who does she think she is?”

For me, there were no happy endings. Several of the posse ended up at my college my junior year. In one week, I was reduced to “that” girl again.

One day I was in the Student Union with a “Big Man On Campus” who happened to have come from my high school. We had been attending the same bible study and were talking about the week’s lesson. One of those girls from high school flounced over and stood directly in front of him and asked him why he was talking with me. Her voice held such disdain mingled with disbelief. Two years out of high school I was still worth nothing in her and her cohorts eyes.

I will never forget how I felt at that moment, having thought I escaped high school and found myself right back there.