I was unpopular in 9th grade. Shocking, I know.

I had a locker next to an extremely popular girl who, as teens do, looked for an excuse to torment me.

On the vague accusation that my locker door had bumped her head, she punched me in the face. (This was one of those "inner city schools" you've read about. I've also been cut with a boxcutter and hit with a bat.)

It wasn't super serious, but I was pretty soft in those days and cried out, which led to both of us being dragged to the dean's office to "sort it out." A third girl from our grade, not particularly friends with either of us, saw the whole thing from directly across the hall from us, and as we got plunked down to "give our side of what happened" I explained that so-and-so saw her haul off and punch me completely unprovoked, just ask her.

She was called in and very primly said, "I don't want to get involved and I didn't see anything anyway," and was immediately allowed to leave. Girl A was undisciplined and I got an ice pack or something.

I changed her name to "Switzerland" and refused to call her anything else for the rest of the year. It was weird and no one got it, but it annoyed her.

The point is, my absolute rage at the girl that went along to get along lasted tens if not hundreds of times longer than the girl that had actually hit me.

This was decades ago, but the Switzerlands of the world still earn a special kind of contempt from me. I pray they get tastes of their own medicine as much as the villains get their justice.