Stand Up

A question about defending yourself came up, and I started to think back over times I had needed to defend myself. This story came to mind, although I never actually defended myself either verbally or physically. None the less, it is a story that still boggles me somewhat, even though I lived it.

My junior year of high school, I attended a summer camp at a college – my sister Natalie’s college, actually. It was a young scholars’ thing, and so everybody was taking some kind of class for college credit. We stayed in the dorms, and I ended up rooming with another girl with my same first name. She was nice enough, I guess, at first, but she would have several girls over late at night, and they would sit on her bed with the lights blazing and talk in loud voices while I tried to sleep. I’d like to point out that we even had something that was sort of a separate room where the dressers were that was more than a foot from my head in which they would be able to sit on the floor and talk. I even vaguely remember asking them to keep it down please, but sometimes they would come in WHILE I WAS SLEEPING and turn on the lights and chat and whatever. It was annoying, but whatever, it was only for two weeks, but I ignored it as best as I could.

We were pretty much allowed the run of campus until about 10 or so, when we had to be in or close to the dorms, but we weren’t allowed off campus. About 15 to 30 minutes before we had to be back to the dorm, I went across campus. See, there was only one vending machine on the entire campus that I had found that had Dr Pepper, and it was a good 5 minute walk to get there and back. But, I have addiction issues with Dr Pepper, so I made the trek regularly.

It’s late-ish, like I said, so it’s dark, and I’m about halfway to the building where the machine is, by myself, a good minute or so from the dorm. All of a sudden, I hear a girl screaming behind me.

“YOU BITCH! YOU BITCH!”

When I turned around, it was one of the girls who hung out in my room when I was trying to sleep. She is RUNNING at me, and I’m looking around like, “huh?” because why the hell is she calling me a bitch?

She comes up and starts posturing towards me like she’s going to hit me, screaming about how I told the counselors about her boyfriend, and I’m just standing there like, “what?” I’m not even trying to defend myself or scared of her or anything. I’m just standing there.

And then I started to laugh.

Turns out that “someone” had told the counselors that she was planning to sneak off campus to meet her boyfriend, a townie, and spend the night with him. Something she had been talking about one day on my roommates bed while I had the covers pulled up over my head wishing they would die.

And this is pretty much what I told her: This is ridiculous. I don’t care if you go off campus. I dont care if you go meet your boyfriend. I don’t care about you AT ALL.

And I just kept laughing. She started to take a swing at me at one point, and i just stood there and laughed. And this wasn’t hysterical laughter, this was, “Are you fucking serious, you moron?” laughter. So, I’m actually laughing AT HER, she is so pissed off she’s cussing me up and down and about to take a swing at me, and I’m not even scared.

I don’t really remember how it was resolved, except for she didnt punch me and I did get my Dr Pepper, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t step foot in my room again. At least, not while I was in there.

It’s not really defending myself, but it’s just such a weird story. How many people get actively threatened and mock their tormentors without getting punched in the face?