Raise Your Hand if You Don't Have Any Friends

The trauma of 2nd grade

When I was 7, my younger sister and I switched schools. My teacher, Mrs. Turner, was an old white lady who dyed her hair platinum blonde (a big deal in the late 80’s) and wore thick, luxurious fur coats at the first hint of fall. I thought the school would be amazing. Maybe that was because the first time I walked into the building, it was my birthday, and that had led to everyone serenading me at the assembly where students’ names were called to split off into their assigned classes.

Hindsight is 2020. I should have realized that the birthday song did not equal my immediate popularity, but I didn’t. I was feeling brave at lunch hour, when we were all told to pick our spots for the year. More than anything, I wanted to sit with April and Jacinda, whom I’d become obsessed with over the course of a single morning recess. April had straight brown hair and a long, hauty face. Jacinda had silky jet black hair and beautiful green eyes. They were 9. I was 7. Sitting beside them would lead to our instantaneous friendship — Duh! The third of their pack, and clearly the hanger-on who they deigned to honour with their presence, was Arlene. Wherever Arlene went, so did her gross little brother, Bobby, but I could put up with him if it meant hanging out with April and Jacinda.

The line between bravery and stupidity is so thin as to be non-existent - I know that now. Back then? I plopped myself down on the periphery of their orbit, and hoped for the best. The best did not materialize.

Lunch hours all year were torture. Where I’d wanted acceptance into a popular clique of older girls, I got equal parts derision and ostracism. Arlene, perhaps sensing that I had tried to encroach on her space, was particularly cruel, picking apart my frizzy hair, my weird name, my odd lunches. Why were there kalamata olives in my sandwhich? Why was my sandwhich made with pita bread? Did I know that my food smelled bad? At night, I dreamed of normal (read: white) lunches — peanut butter and jelly on white bread, hot dogs, kraft singles with crackers — food my mother had deemed preservative-filled and unhealthy.

Bobby took turns piling on Arlene’s merciless teasing and snorting his milk up his nose through his straw. Across the room sat other girls, less cool girls I could have befriended, if only I hadn’t overestimated my social cachet.

Because I hadn’t made friends at the lunch tables, recess was another impossible struggle. I didn’t know how to walk up to other kids and ask to join their game of jump rope, their game of tag, their game of basketball. Worse, no one who sat next to me was from my class, so I remained friendless there too.

After months of isolation, my mother got my permission to explain my predicament to Mrs. Turner. I felt a glimmer of hope. Mrs. Turner was the teacher, after all, and impossibly cool, with her deep tan and her long, painted nails. She would fix this. I would have friends too.

We were in the middle of independent work, when Mrs. Turner cleared her throat, and said, “Ok class, can everyone pay attention to me?” I thought she was about to start a new lesson, but instead she said, “raise your hand if you don’t have any friends.” I looked around and saw everyone else’s hands planted on the tabletops in front of them, but I knew she meant me, so I raised mine anyway. “See class: Noha doesn’t have any friends, so let’s all include her.” And that was her solution.

Reader, I want to tell you that I knew that raising my hand was akin to becoming a wounded deer on the serengetti. And I want to tell you that I raised my hand anyway. Why? I wish I had a reason I could share with you. Something unexpected. Something that would make you reconsider this whole ordeal. But I can’t, because that’s not the truth.

The truth is that I raised my hand because I was a hopeless people pleaser, even then. Because my mother had gone to my teacher with a problem, and my teacher had handled it with about the same level of care one might dedicate to squashing a fly, and yet I could not fathom ignoring the instruction, could not fathom acting in self-preservation at the expense of NOT following an arbitrary, momentary rule.

Luckily, against all odds, things got better. The other kids realized how lonely I was, how badly I needed a friend, and took me in. Just kidding! That’s not what happened! The ones who were already cruel got worse, and the ones who’d never noticed me before, started. It was an awful year.

I used to wonder whether Mrs. Turner intentionally set me up for failure. Maybe she was an awful, racist woman who wanted to torment the only Arab kid in her class. Upon reflection, I’ve come to realize that she wasn’t malicious, just negligent. This was not a teacher for whom educating children was a vocation. This was a teacher who took a job and spent as little time on it as possible, to my great detriment.

The Mrs. Turner saga is the only glaring example I have of such an astounding self-own, but in more subtle ways, I’ve hung myself out to dry repeatedly over the years: Ignoring my needs in favour of someone else’s, refusing to take credit for my work, saying yes to things I didn’t want to do with the sole purpose of avoiding confrontation. Doing more than my fair share of the heavy lifting, in projects, in friendships, in chores. Trying to make everyone else comfortable, no matter the consequences to my physical, mental, spiritual, or emotional health.

In recent years, I’ve gotten better. I’ve learned to say no, or to ask for accommodations. I’ve learned to express my needs. I’ve learned to carve out time. To think. To write. To go for long bike rides. To read Quran. My heart still quickens at the thought of asking for something, even if it’s something I’m entitled to, but I now push through that quickening. More often than not, when I ask, I receive.

If you’re wondering what happened to Mrs. Turner, she slipped on some ice that February, and broke her collarbone. She was off for the rest of the school year. We got a wonderful long term supply teacher named Mrs. Kursh in her place. One day, a classmate came told us breathlessly that the broken collarbone was a lie. That he’d seen Mrs. Turner singing on TV, that she’d gone off to become a huge rock star. The whole class believed him, as 7 year olds are wont to do. It took years before I realized he was talking about Tina Turner.

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Have you ever set yourself up to fail spectaculary? What’s your worst self-own? Can you see in hindsight why you behaved the way you did?