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When I was in the 7th and 8th grade, I was picked on. A lot. Mostly by the boys on the flag football and basketball teams but the girls in their cliques would typically just stand by and watch with smirks on their faces when the boys chanted whatever stupid rhyme they had thought up for the day. Their silent stares were just as hurtful.

It was strange how some of the people who came to my birthday parties every year from first grade through fifth grade suddenly didn't know me when 6th grade started. They were in 6B, I was in 6A - our classes had been jumbled up and I was in a classroom with unfamiliar faces. 6th grade was fine, I made new friends. 7th grade was meh - we were jumbled up again. 8th grade was barf. I cried at home on an almost daily basis.

If not for the fact that I knew my family loved me (despite going through a hellish puberty and fighting with my parents regularly) and for the mish-mash of friends I had I could have become a seriously messed up individual at the hands of my peers.

My friends were a band of misfits - the girl that was 4'9 and tormented for it (the boys played keep-away with her stuff, dangling it above her head so she'd have to jump up to get her stuff back), the painfully shy girl, the uuber smart Asian girl, the hyper girl who know about gangstas, the Mexican girl with the big lips and booty that we'd all kill for now, but was the source of much taunting and then there was me - the 80 pound dork who wasn't allowed to shave her legs... who was dressed by her mother in clothes from the petite woman's section instead of the juniors section... and who was forced to try out for the cheer team and made it only to be the girl who sat alone at practice.

I somehow still liked myself, but I was slowly coming to hate everyone else.

Towards the end of that last year in Jr. High, I began to unravel - I think we all did a little. We began to pick on each other within our own group and said some of the same mean things that outsiders had said to one another. I felt picked on by the hyper girl and I didn't know how to deal with it. None of us could see at the time how much it must have hurt our friends to be picked on, because we were all so concerned with coping ourselves.

To be picked on by the football team was one thing, but to be teased by a friend pierced the faux suit of armor I had built up around me. Looking back, I doubt she even knew that she was doing it.

I went about things backwards and ended up indirectly "dumping" this girl maybe 2 months before graduation, although she was the one that stopped hanging out with us (after a blow out in the middle of the school yard where I said "you treat me like shit.") Everything was a whirlwind from that point on.

She started hanging out with a different group of girls - one of the girls had come up to me at lunch and said "Please take her back. She's so annoying." I didn't say anything. I could see on my ex-friend's face that she knew she didn't fit in with the new group she had latched onto, but I had painfully pushed her out of mine and at that time all I could think about was protecting myself emotionally.

Even then, I felt horrible for her but I was so consumed with my own suffering that I couldn't think of opening myself up to her again and she should never have any reason to want to talk to me. I tossed her out to the wild without thinking of how painful it must have been for her to be alone in a place where we all already knew that we didn't belong.

I'm somewhat ashamed of it now and I wish I could apologize, but I wouldn't know how to begin. I was 12 years old and I'm not sorry for trying to stick up for myself, but I'm sorry for how I did it. I would go back and do it all differently, but I can't ever take away what may have become a huge scar on that girl's life.

I once moved seats in a movie theater to get a better seat and ended up hurting a friend who thought I didn't want to sit next to her. It was accidental, but it wouldn't have taken much thought for me to explain my move to my friend and ask her if her seat was ok. I learned that I wielded the power to hurt people intentionally or not and that either way, I didn't like the way that it felt. I've since said and done things that probably needed to be said, but I wish I wasn't the one who had to say them.

Anyway, that was on my mind today. I felt like sharing.

I am seriously so stoked for Mr. Ben Hays because a) he is awesome, b) he is hilarious and c) he is fracking talented. In any case, the most recent video from the brilliant minds of Ben & Ryan is this:





...and while I know it's the internetz and they're going to have to line up after the star wars boy, the crying screaming Brittney kid, and the 3 year old talking about monsters to get their internetz dollars, this is somehow already bigger than that.

See, these guys actually wrote something, thought it out and put it on the internet. The funniest youtube videos are not scripted - they're a 50 second glimpse of someone doing something stupid or outrageous and then it goes viral. 90% of all scripted youtube videos are not funny. 95% of them are not smart. They happened to do both and I'm so stoked for them because seriously with the skill those guys have it's just the beginning of everything they were going for. Fricking Joe Rogan sent them an e-mail telling them it was the funniest thing he's seen all year!

Brilliant. Congrats Ben - you rule... I'm so excited for you (even though you're a Mac fanboy and I haven't seen you in person since sometime in 2003... but seriously... Ben and Ryan...awesome show, great job.)