Tuesday, November 16, 2021 The Gang Leader’s Girlfriend

When I was in junior high, something happened that really terrified me for a long time. I was a timid child, easily frightened, so maybe that’s not saying much. It happened while I was with some friends of mine.

We had been hanging around at a house about a block away from mine and there was a group of girls across the street sitting on a hill at the park. They seemed to be taunting us in some way, but we couldn’t hear them and basically just ignored it. We decided to go down to the local pharmacy and a few of them followed us. This made us uneasy, but we got safely into the store and hung out there, hoping the girls would just go away. We didn’t know them all, but a couple of them were familiar, also being students at our junior high school.

One of them was a tall girl named Julie, with whom I’d had no prior unpleasant dealings. When we left the store, they were waiting for us and started following us back. To my absolute horror, Julie started singling me out, and telling me that they had something to tell me. I hung back a little bit and Julie informed me that one of the girls (who hadn’t come with them) had taken a dislike to me and was going to beat me up. That girl (her name might have been Kim, so let’s just call her that), was the girlfriend of the leader of the local gang. She was a very threatening looking person – I stayed far away from her in school and had managed to stay under her radar.

When we got back to the house, my friends all left me out in the front yard with Julie and her friends. Kim came over at this point. They circled around me and taunted me with threats. I kept trying to explain that I didn’t understand why they were against me. I was like an animal trapped in a cage and just kept turning around trying to talk my way out of the situation. At one point they let me go in the house for a break. My friends commiserated with me at this bad turn of events, but had no advice or help for me. I thought my lot at school would be a lot worse if I didn’t go back out and face them, so I went out again to the same thing. It really was awful. This went on for at least an hour and it was starting to get dark. If there were any adults at the house (and I’m betting the mother was there), nobody came to my rescue. I was truly alone – at least I thought I was.

I’m not sure why they didn’t just beat me up, but I’m guessing that it was never really their intention; the real fun was in making me squirm and causing me to fear them. When all hope seemed lost, a neighbor boy went walking by – he was older than all of us. “What’s going on here?” he inquired, and then pretty much told them all to leave me alone. They went on their way and I could have kissed that boy’s feet, I was so relieved.

I didn’t know the Lord at the time, but looking back, I see how kind and gracious God was to rescue me that day by sending that boy along, a young man who apparently wasn’t afraid to confront bad people. I couldn’t be too hard on my friends either – it was humbling to reflect on my own cowardice and realize that I would probably have done the same thing that they did.

I had nightmares about that event for at least a year and lived in fear of running into Kim and her henchmen at school and having the whole ordeal repeated. She never paid me the slightest attention. And I never told my parents or siblings what happened.

This has been Tuesday True Stories with Lynniebeemuseoday.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning unless I have nightmares about it.