NO FUN GABY DUNN

Jan. 3, 2011 at 12:41pm with 48 notes

The point of the 100 Interviews list is for me to meet 100 people unlike any I’d ever met before.

And I’m being honest when I say I’d never met them, but on one, I fudged a bit.

True, I’d never met an amputee before. But I did know someone who was missing a limb.

And I’d stood idly by while others bullied her.

We all like to think that when push comes to literal shove — when someone is being bullied, we’d step up. We’d say, “Hey guys, cut it out. Knock it off. Leave ‘em alone.”

But most of the time, it doesn’t occur to us implicitly. We have to grow up. We have to learn that standing up for what’s right is more important than trying to stay afloat in the deep, dark waters of adolescence.

Personally, I was young. I was the least popular and least attractive friend in a group of girls. I was nerdy. I was allowed to hang out with them and then routinely ridiculed for my frizzy hair, my penchant for quoting sci-fi movies, my social awkwardness, my love of writing. I was barely able to handle the sheer terror of struggling with my sexuality at a religious summer camp where I lived with other girls. All I wanted was to be left alone.

She was different and she was confident about it. Two cardinal sins among children.

She talked about her unusual interests. She dared breach our cabin with her weird prosthetic leg and her less than perfect aesthetic. She diminished our aloof cool by simply existing in our orbit. She had to be taken down.

And so I sat.

I sat on my bed and said nothing while they messed up hers. While they sabotaged her prosthetic. While they resented her “special privileges.” I didn’t know her well but I nodded when others called her a “bitch” for being so happy while so deformed. How dare she smile with a stump while we fretted and self-injured and cried over temporary pimples, bad haircuts, tweenage fat days. How dare she.

Sometimes, we’d talk.

Once, on a bench outside our cabin, she and I lingered after clean-up hour, talking — I don’t remember about what. And I was anxious.

Anxious someone would see us. Would think we were hanging out. Would think we were friends.

In November, she added me on Facebook. Wrote on my wall saying she’d found 100 Interviews and was delighted to see it was an old acquaintance behind it. Congratulated me on my career in writing.

I waited a week to write back.

At 22 years old, I defaulted to being unsure if I should talk to her. Old habits.

I did write back eventually, friendly and warm. Calling her “lady” as I sometimes affectionately do with female friends and asking her to update me on her life. She said she was going to Atlanta to start a new job. I confirmed her friendship but didn’t respond.

On New Years Eve, she died in a car accident.

Facebook has these new, stupid “See Friendship” pages now and today, as I write this, I have mine and hers open in another tab.

There’s no picture of us. We weren’t close. There’s only the back and forth comment exchange from a few months ago.

“What’s new with you?” she’d asked. The question hangs there. Unanswered.

Nothing much is new with me, it seems. Nothing much.