But the one I can think of from middle school is that in the 8th grade my best friend was a guy named Chris. We hung out all year and it was completely platonic. He was like my brother. We talked on the phone a lot and our parents were cool with the fact that we hung out alot alone–it just wasn’t weird.

Then Chris started dating a girl in our grade, Kelly, that I didn’t know very well but had helped him think of ways to get up the courage to talk to her and stuff so I was not threatened at all. But I don’t think it was the same for her because after they started dating he was completely different. At first he just didn’t return phone calls but then he stopped having lunch with me and finally one day when I called to him in the crowded hallway when he was ahead of me (like I’d always done) he turned around and screamed “What the hell is your problem, are you like obsessed with me or something?” I froze and I think everyone was looking at me. And up ahead I could see Kelly standing by her locker with some friends and they were laughing hysterically. I ran to the bathroom and pretty much stayed there the rest of the day crying.

I completely ignored him after that…obviously. But I wish that I had tried to talk to him alone at some point and figure out what was going on rather than ignore it. And I wish I had tried to tell Kelly there was nothing to worry about. A year or so later after they’d broken up he was sort of sheepishly trying to be friends but by then I had a boyfriend and got more pleasure out of ignoring him than I did being friends. Very sad.

In high school, I was walking down the hall, minding my own business. I was extremely shy and reserved and a very good girl. A popular girl, for reasons I never discovered, screamed, “Bitch!” right into my face and kept right on walking. I was dating a friend of hers, later confirmed that they did not “like” each other and never found out what that was all about.

In any case, I did NOTHING. I was shaking like a leaf. I ran into the bathroom to cry in hiding. I didn’t even tell my boyfriend because I was afraid he would think I was trying to start trouble between he and his friend.

If I could do it over, knowing what I know now, I would probably “do” nothing more than call her a psycho and mention the bizarre encounter to my boyfriend. Not because I would want him to take care of anything, just because it’s his friend and she behaved like a crazy person. I most certainly wouldn’t be shaking or crying. I wouldn’t be afraid of her not liking me and convincing others to not like me. I wouldn’t think my boyfriend was going to assume I was starting trouble, and if he did, he would be dumped.

What I didn’t realize was that my peers possessed a secret advantage over me. This was the mid-90s, and full-text graphing calculators were becoming all the rage among nerdy teens like us. Unfortunately, I was the oldest of four siblings at home, and my single mother couldn’t afford to buy me such a fancy accessory. The day of the test, we all arrived in class and found our seats at the bar-height lab tables. I felt confident and prepared, but I couldn’t understand why everyone else seemed ESPECIALLY confident, even smug.

Leaving the test, one of my classmates confided in me that the rest of the class had programmed the test answers into their calculators–this was the era before teachers got wise and cleared calculators’ memories before tests. Not only had the rest of class blatantly cheated, but they had also used my answers!

I felt bitterly betrayed. At the same time, I found myself completely paralyzed, unwilling to say a word about what I had observed. Although my teacher trusted me–I was a favorite of hers, and if I told her the story, she would have believed me–I didn’t want to “make trouble” for my peers by “ratting them out.” So I silently allowed them to enjoy their little coup. And I still got an “A” in the class…