Monday 5 November 2007

Humans are malicious.

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When I was 11 or 12 I knew this girl. Virginia. My friends and I once misread her name as Vagina and got hysterical. We were probably very mean, in fact I know we were. She was odd looking and acting, which isn't saying much - as I was odd looking and acting, but worse I was judgemental in that typical adolescent girl assimilating herself within the group sort of way. Her eyes were big and she had curly blonde hair. I can't remember anything she liked; I just remember that thick plastic tag on her Jan Sport backpack, hanging in the coat room, spelling out her name in big multicoloured letters. She stole stuff, now that I think of it, from that coat room. $20 from that kid Brian Macaulay's bag, or maybe it was that tall blonde kid that looked like a Viking and laughed at me once when I got pastry dough on my t-shirt when we were cooking pies for an apple-harvest celebration. I can't remember. Virginia had it rough. She was a rich kid whose mother made crafts in their kitchen and sold at local fairs, and whose father did something or another I never cared much about. Someone once called her wide-load, Max Morningstar I think, and she got all upset and I did nothing because I didn't care. She wasn't even fat, she was just big. Once I had a dream where she, myself, and my friends were all walking down the road in Wellesley Massachusetts. There was this big pickup truck with some weird guy who asked if we needed a ride. We all had wet feet, or missing shoes. Myself and my friends said no, but Virginia jumped on inside and they drove off. Somehow, although I was no there, I knew there was some awful altercation going on in the truck with Virginia and the weird guy. Although I remember it as a dream, I can't be too sure that it wasn't a story that I was told happened to her. I don't think it happened. The last time I saw her I was 13 or 14 - she had been kicked out or had left school, for stealing from people or something. I was in a Star Wars flight simulator at the local cinema, cackling wildly with my sister Leah as we were jerked around in this mass of plastic on hydraulic gears. Virginia and her friends were near by. She must have said something to them about us, because they were calling out our names in some attempt to start a fight, and we didn't really notice over the din of simulated pod racers. Once it stopped, we saw a sheepish looking Virginia tugging a friend by the sleeve, while the others were glaring at us. I couldn't think why they were all so malicious, until Leah and I got more quarters for the other grand prix game, and I remembered laughing at her name tag hanging in the coat room.

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