The Class Loser

I have two great regrets in life. In elementary school, there was a sweet and shy girl who was mercilously picked on, and I contributed.

Every school has them. The child that is on the absolute bottom of the food chain. The one to whom all crap slides. Their names become insults, slang for instant putdowns. I am sure you can, and are, recalling them now.

We all terrorize, and we are all terrorized, but this person is at the bottom.

Why? Some of it may have to do with peculiar looks, social status, inability to defend oneself, but I think there is an even more important reason. These people are better than the rest of us. There is a goodness inside of them that prevents them from preying upon others. And in that vacuum steps the raw cruelty that only children can muster.

I imagine she is beautiful. She is Maria Bartiromo. She married a surgeon. She drives a ridiculously expensive Mercedes, and she passes me on the side of the road, and looks at me with decades matured pity.

But this too is self serving on my part. She needn't any of these things to be better than me. She always was.