I have a story. When I was in junior high school, my friend Diane was being tormented at the lunch table by some girls for telling Dawn that Kim didn't like her dress for the 9th grade dance...which caused Dawn to deliberately burn a hole in her dress so her parents would buy another. ( I know, right.)

After a few minutes, I told them to leave her alone...which infuriated her tormentors. They raged at me and told me to stay out of it. Diane and I had a bond...we'd both lost our mothers at a young age (me at four and Diane at twelve)...so I didn't a back down. She was literally sobbing.

Denise, who was a year behind us, stood up and called me out. She wanted to fight me at the flag pole after school, which both shocked me and amused me. Keep in mind, this was a pretty affluent public school in suburban Philadelphia. I told her I wasn't going to fight her; and, eventually, told her to shut the f*ck up. That didn't go over well.

They literally took a vote to kick me off the lunch table. LOL. I watched as they went one-by-one and took their vote. Everyone...including Diane, the girl I was defending, and another friend named Christine...voted to kick me off the table. Only one girl...whose last name was Himmelreich...refused to participate. She looked at me and said, "I want no part of this." They pressured her, but she wouldn't back down.

Of course, I was a social pariah for the last few weeks of school. No one wanted to sit with me. And this evil little b*tch named Julie enlisted the help of some boys to harass me on the other side of the cafeteria.

It changed how I felt about all of these people...and revealed who I was to myself.

I started studying German in high school and realized what Himmelreich meant. :) Don't think it was a coincidence.