Thursday, Jul. 03, 2008
Mean Girls Not Limited to High School
The Confessions of a Mad Housewife
Michele Valdez
Editor’s Note: From time to time, columnist Michele Valdez revisits a previous column topic by the request of readers. She’s updated this one with a fresh perspective.
Mean girls are everywhere, and not just in high school.
Some malicious mamas are in their 30s and 40s and live in Northeast Tarrant County. Mean girls grow up and become mean mamas around the age of 35.
There are no signs other than cockiness.
It can happen to women who are successful in their careers or stay at home because their husbands make buckets of money. It’s the same cockiness you had in high school; the kind that made you think you couldn’t get pregnant or have a car accident.
The older version of a mean girl is the worst kind.
They treat store clerks like they are worthless, take more pride in the way they look than in how they treat people and argue with overworked and underpaid teachers when their kids get a bad grade.
I was a mean girl at work and for the first few years I stayed home.
Being mean was like a sport.
It was a challenge to verbally dissect anyone who had the nerve to tell me "no." From hairdresser to waiter to grocery cashier, I was merciless.
For me, I thought being mean proved that I was as tough as the guys at work. My toxic tongue ensured that no one ever took advantage of me.
Of course, it didn’t prove anything other than that I was a miserable human being.
Being mean started to take a toll. It was stressful assuming a perpetual launch mode: always ready to attack. To be prepared for verbal battle, I dreamed of nasty one-liners to cause maximum pain. I would awaken trying to remember the verbal bullets like they were a valuable commodity.
Then something happened: motherhood, aging and thankfully, religion.
It was time for a change.
Today I am nicer. I am not drippy sweet, but I am pretty agreeable. The only problem is that occasionally I run into a mean girl and don’t know how to react.
Should I regress and give them a gold-medal tongue lashing or should I spread the word that being nice is a whole lot easier than being nasty? Don’t they know that youth, beauty and wealth are fleeting and that they should use their assets to help others rather than terrorizing those around them?
In Southlake last year I played tennis against a mean girl.
This bad-mouthed babe had the aggression of a John Gotti hit man packed into her 34 DD chest. Even though we were on a tennis court, her game was cruel intimidation. That day my partner and I were victims, not of her tennis prowess, but of her unkind conduct.
At first, the mean girl inside me was poised to lash out.
As a lawyer and former union negotiator, I knew I could make mince meat out of that hostile housewife.
Then, like a computer screen pop-up, I remembered a line from Grey’s Anatomy [season two]. Izzy, a nice female intern helped another intern, Alex, study for an exam even though he had hurt her deeply. When a friend asked why she came to his aid she declared, "It’s what Jesus would frickin’ do!"
At that moment the mean girl inside of me melted away. I wouldn’t judge the person on the other side of the net.
Instead, I offered peace (as the Christian thing to do), finished the tennis match and got on with life.
I sometimes see that mean tennis mama around town. I only hope that she is a Grey’s Anatomy fan, too.
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