Mean girls

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Was just reading this and it made me think about some of the mean girls I've known

http://www.purpleclover.com/relationshi ... les-lives/

I also used to think people would grow out of childhood meanness, but I guess most don't.

Why would anyone "grow out" of being mean if they enjoy it and it doesn't harm anything they value in life?

It may not make you smarter, but it can show how smart you are. The smarter you are, the more people will be less smart than you and thus look stupid to you. Besides, it also shows you're honest and have the guts to call them stupid to their faces.

Nope, they don't. Childhood bullies grow up into adult bullies. One's basic personality rarely changes.

It's been a few decades since I graduated high school. All through my school days and beyond, there was only one girl I stayed in touch with -- we met in third grade and she's my "go to" to this day, even though we live on different continents.

A few months ago, a bunch of my former school classmates set up a Whatsapp group with the intent of organizing a "reunion". The thought of meeting the pack - even after decades - made me cringe, but I willingly signed up for the group thinking that we were all teens riding hormonal highs when we last met face-to-face and that the girls might have ... you know... actually grown up since then ?? (We are all on the other side of 40 now, BTW).

It took me a quarter of a millisecond after joining that Whatsapp group to be quickly disabused of any such notions. In fact, the decades had caused some of them to turn into quite the sour pusses. Age hadn't mellowed them, nor had maturity actually happened. To be fair, some of them *had* changed for the better, when I interacted with them 1:1, but when encountering them as "part of the pack", they were indistinguishable from their peers (and not in a good way). Still catty, still petty, still very very dismissive of anyone whose lifestyle or family circumstances or socio-economic status was very different from theirs.

And, needless to say, that reunion -- that I skipped out on -- wasn't exactly wholesome (if you catch my drift). How could it be when people harboured grudges that were over 25 years old ?!

I was really disappointed with the whole experience. I had hoped to reconnect with these women who had been a part of my childhood and adolescence, girls I had grown up with, so it was really upsetting to learn that very little change actually happens to the human personality, even across decades. A mean teenager merely morphs into a mean menopausal woman.

Dramatic changes of character -- that stuff only happens in Bollywood masala movies. Not in real life.

That's a horrifying thought. lol

I work for one. I call her Heather in my mind from the movie. She has been accepting of me because I will butt heads with her, but she can be a small town mean girl.

It's not a friendship, but a truce between us. I wouldn't be surprised if she had a Sarah Palin shrine tucked away somewhere.

I lived with two of them. My father once even called the older of my two sisters and her friends b****es because they would just talk over me when I would try to interact with them and she condoned her friends' talking smack about me behind her back. It still didn't stop my dad from thinking sunshine and rainbows flying out of her ass, though, and she still doesn't like to hear it when I mention my latest information on my academic options, modest as they may be.

I definitely have a handful of these at my place of employment. One of them has been there for a long time, another has had basically her whole family work there at one time or another so she came in with a massive sense of entitlement. These two are technically in one of the lower "ranks" of job titles, but they seem to think they rule the roost and that it's a good idea to model their behavior after the bratz dolls. They get the "employee of the month" award on a regular basis. There are several other "MeanGirl" types as well.
Sadly one of them is the operations manager, and anyone who doesn't suck up to the alpha female is forever despised by all but the truly nice people who rise above that kind of unpleasant human behavior.
Fortunately most of the doctors are nice people, they are technically above the manager in the hierarchy to the best of my (Aspie-skewed) understanding, and they think I do a good job at what I was hired to do. So they are kind to me.