Silent

"Sometimes, I said sometimes
I hear my voice
I hear my voice
I hear my voice
And it's been here:
Silent all these years."

--Tori Amos, "Silent All These Years."

First comment: holy fuck it's March. Fuck fuck fuck. Only 18 more days that I can round down. Only 18 more days that I'm permitted to wear miniskirts, according to one of my favorite fashion-makeover shows, "What Not To Wear."

Curses. I love my skirt collection. I was shopping with [Name] the other day, and I couldn't help but fondle all the pencil skirts. They are an addiction for a tall girl who can never buy pants off the rack. [Name] has indicated that I had "better not follow that damn rule!" And, certainly, I won't.

Fuck you, Thirty-Five. Why do you have to be so ridiculous about everything? Tell me my womb is drying up *AND* take away my miniskirts? No. I don't think so.

Anyway. Onto my silence.

Anyone who knows me from way back when rounding my age meant TWENTY, knows that I'm not usually one to keep my mouth shut about things for which I have a well-formulated opinion. This weekend, I was silent about something, and I am waivering between berating myself for not speaking up and being proud of myself for letting something slide.

I either missed out on an opportunity to educate someone about a topic very important to me, or I allowed a not-yet-fully-formed-friendship some room to breathe before I opened my can of whupass.

A person, who I will call "The Uninformed," began telling a story about a friend of his who went to high school with Christina Aguilera. Now, I am not in love with Christina or her music, but I have seen the VH1 "Behind the Music" about her, and as a result, I feel connected to her and supportive of her in a way that other people might not. In fact, I even used one of her songs as my snippet for a blog post about the very thing that Christina and I have in common: we were both bullied as teenagers.

So apparently, The Uninformed's friend has a singular (pathetic) claim to fame: he was the dude who started the Christina Aguilera Smells Like Hot Dogs rumor, such that all you have to do is type "Christina Aguilera smells" into Google, and "like hot dogs" will autopopulate.

What.
A.
Fucking.
Loser.

(The Uniformed's friend will heretofore be referred to as "Waffle.")

The Uninformed's wife even whipped out her iPhone to test the autopopulate theory, and everyone at the table had a good laugh over Ms. Aguilera. The Uninformed recounted how Waffle and his other high school buddies would make sniffing noises when Christina passed them in the halls at school, and say, "Does anyone smell hotdogs?" and the like.

And there I am, sitting at the table, remembering exactly what it felt like to be on the other end of that.

How I would try to hold my head high and pretend I didn't hear the whispers when I walked into the cafeteria.

How I would pretend that I didn't hear the boys chanting "BOOM-bobba-BOOM-bobba" to the rhythm of my steps as I walked down the halls, like the kids do to the really fat kid in the "barfarama" story in the movie "Stand By Me" (even though I was a fairly normal size 10-12 in high school).

How I tried not to burst into tears when a girl in my own "circle" told me to my face that the "whole group would be more popular if you weren't in it."

How it took years of therapy for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder before I didn't have flashbacks to any number of moments of being publicly humiliated by friends, enemies, teachers, and even nuns.

I'm not usually silent on this topic, and I don't know why I held back at that moment. Deep down, I wanted to tell him to grow the fuck up.

Perhaps I want to believe that The Uninformed is just ignorant, and that with time I might be able to share with him my story.

Perhaps I chickened out because I didn't want to seem uncool, even now.

Even at age 34.95.

That's how long bullying stays with you.

I should have said something.

I won't waiver on this anymore.