Isn’t it amazing how we remember the awful things so clearly? It’s nothing near what you experienced, but there was a troublemaking older boy in my sophomore year Spanish class in high school, and I overheard (because he intended me too, I’m sure) him discussing something about me that he found attractive, then indicating another girl in the class and telling his friends it was too bad “one has the face and the other has the body.”

To this day I think of him and have discussed that story with my husband more than once. What bugs me most about it is that while I think I know which he meant I had, I’m not sure, and for some reason I can’t stop wondering. Obviously it’s irrelevant now, and it was then, but it was an awful feeling and I know I won’t ever forget it. I think of it far more often than any positive encounters I may have had with boys in h.s.