Thank you mean girls.

I've been walking my current dogs and my two previous dogs for close to 20 years around the local area, so we are fairly well known and have made some good friends and lots of nodding acquaintances. It's a really great neighbourhood, the sort of area where there is just the right amount of walkers to make saying hello to them all acceptable behaviour.

Recently the dogs and I decided to take a slightly different route which meant leaving the usual bike paths and walking along a main road before making our way back to the familiar paths.  Just before getting back into my usual territory we passed three late teen girls and as we passed them I did the usual smile, nod, hello routine which is usually results in the recipient noticing how gorgeous my dogs are followed by lots of patting, wiggling bottoms (the dogs not mine) and general feel good behaviour.  This time the was no acknowledgement of me or the dogs and as they got past me I heard them burst into that derisive style of laughter teenage girls excel at.

As I have said before, I hated my teenage years.  I did not fit in with anyone I went to school with and they certainly let me know that I was an extremely unattractive, boring, daggy freak that had no place in their lives or indeed the human race.  This resulted in me feeling completely humiliated too many times to even remember, although I know each instance inflicted deep wounds which left lots of tender scars.  Well into my adult life, if I passed anyone who was laughing, I KNEW they MUST be laughing at the daggy freak that just passed them, even when it was obvious it had nothing to do with me.

So with this history and with the bonus element of teenage girls being the ones laughing I should have had the usual reaction.

But I didn't. I walked for a full minute before it hit me that I had not made the assumption that they were laughing at me, I didn't even care that when I thought about it they probably were laughing at the wacky old dog lady who was weird enough to say hello to them.

Sometime over the years I stopped having such a low opinion of myself that I believed that I should expect to be treated with scorn.  At some point I stopped believing I was ugly, stupid and boring.  At some point I learned that the dagginess was actually intelligence that did not thrive in the classroom environment, but worked wonderfully when I was left to work stuff out in my own way.   In other words, in real life.  The reason  I felt so different is because I am different and and thank dog I never worked out that I could have faked "normal" and I could join the mean girls pretending I was special by making other people feel like shit.

So thank you local mean girls.  Without your laughter I may never have realised the scars have healed and I am so much better off for never learning how to stop being a freak.