Learning From Our Pasts

I didn't realize it at the time, but in sixth grade I did something so cruel that I can't believe I was ever that kind of person.

In the middle of my sixth grade year a new girl came to my school. She was a sweet girl, but she seemed a little odd to me at the time. After a few weeks she voiced to a friend that she had a crush on me and word spread through the grapevine at supersonic speed. Being the least popular kid in school I was thrilled with the prospect that a girl might actually like me. So we started what I call kid dating a few days later. We ate lunch together we talked through study hall and a few of the other classes that we shared over the following couple of weeks. I'm not 100% sure how the subject came up, though I think it was a classmate who asked her what church she went to. She said she didn't go to church and that she was Wiccan. None of us semi-small town kids had a clue what that meant, so she put it into layman's terms for us; she told us she was a Witch. We all kind of shook our heads at that. None of us had ever thought that witches were real, let alone that a cute girl in our class could even be one.

I didn't think much of her declaration at first, but the more the other kids started calling her names and saying she was a devil worshiper the more I became fearful and uneasy. Like any good Mormon I asked my Sunday School teacher about witches and he told me pretty much what the kids in school were saying, that witches worship the devil and are evil. That was all my little closed mind needed to hear. When I got to school the following Monday I told her our kid dating was over. But, that was not the worst of my religious intolerance. I joined in with the other kids in harassing and tormenting her; I called her names, i knocked her books out of her hands in the hallway. I was as cruel as one kid could ever be to another.

About a week of this torment went on, until that is I actually made her cry. We were in art class and I was giving her hell along with everyone else. I can't for the life of me remember what I said, but it cut her deep. She started to cry then looked me in the eye and said, that one day I would be made to feel as horrible as I made her feel; then she ran out of the class and never came back.

She was right. Karma did return to me three fold the misery I put that poor girl through. It wasn't until many years later when I became a Wiccan that I understood just how cruel and hurtful I had been to such a kind sweet girl that had crushed on me, the least popular kid in school. 

Although I cannot for the life of me remember the girls name, I will always be indebted to her for teaching me the kind of person I never want to be again.