Settle for More

by Megyn Kelly

  “How was it?” she asked.

  My dad made a thumbs-down gesture.

  I was hurt and confused by what had happened and completely without the skills to handle it. I guess I did the right thing. What would I tell my child to do in such a situation? Call me. Go get a grown-up. The upside of all the hovering we do today with our own children is that a responsible adult is usually only about three feet away when we need one. Maybe that’s why we stick so close to our own kids now—because we remember from our own free-for-all childhoods what can happen when you don’t.

  When I was in fifth grade, things were on the upswing again. My father took a teaching job at SUNY Albany, so we said good-bye to Syracuse, and I transferred to a new elementary school in a suburb of the capital city. As the new girl in Delmar, I was fairly popular. I even ran for class president. Each candidate had to come up with a nickname appropriate to her platform. Mine was Penny Preserves, because I stood for thriftiness and saving the environment. Alas, I was defeated by “George Brett.” His platform was that the Kansas City Royals were awesome.

  In sixth grade I met Kelly McGuiness, one of the best friends I would ever have. We had both been marked as students who might belong in advanced math, so they had us take a test. We met in that test room, sitting next to each other at the desks. We laughed and bonded. Neither one of us made it into advanced math, so we were math-whiz also-rans together. She and I were inseparable for the next decade.

  Decent grades came fairly easily, and so I focused more on my all-consuming social life than my schoolwork. While I was outgoing enough to have friends, I was not cute enough for most of the boys. I was a bit overweight, with my dad’s gap between my two front teeth and acne-prone skin (something I struggle with to this day).

  “She’s going to be with us for a long, long time,” my parents liked to joke. That idea didn’t bother me. I loved my parents and was happy they might be stuck with me.

  “Don’t worry,” a friend of mine said. “Farrah Fawcett was an ugly duckling, too.”

  This did not offend me either. I knew I was not attractive. It was encouraging, however, to think I could be one day.

  Kelly, on the other hand, was always very pretty, and she helped me discover the joys of Sun-In highlights, curling irons, Clearasil, and Forenza V-neck sweaters. Kelly and I would wear matching leg warmers and rugby shirts. We became quite popular, and were asked to most parties, which was about all we ever really wanted.

  Then, a year later, in seventh grade, it started. Over the years I’ve looked back, trying to understand what began it all, but I’ve come up empty. One day, almost literally overnight, I was on the outside—not just of my friend group, but of what felt like the whole world. It was as if I’d gone to sleep myself and woken up as a ghost. No one would sit with me at lunch. No one would stand next to me at gym. No one would choose me for their team. No one would take my calls. Kids flicked spitballs into my hair and made nasty comments about my looks. Girls tried to trip me in the hallway.

  It wasn’t so much the targeting in class, it was the total elimination of me as a person. I used to be so social, walking through the hallways, talking with friends. Now I would try to walk up to a circle of girls and they would disperse immediately, with eye rolls and pained expressions, as if it was ridiculous that I would even try to talk to them. I went from spending all of my time with these girls to being treated like I had killed one of them.

  The cruel expressions, their obvious disdain for me—it was as if I had a putrid smell, as if just being seen near me could result in a hideous illness. They looked at me with such disgust, it made me feel disgusted with myself. I would walk by a circle of the girls at the entrance to a class, and they would laugh—loudly—to make sure I knew it was about me. They would pick something on me—my sneakers, my jeans, my large backside—and mutter an insult as I walked by, like “Try the salad, for God’s sake!” Or “What is she, four? What’s with the decorated sneakers? Grow up.”

  We used to get together every day after school somewhere—hanging out around the outside of our school, or going over to someone’s house. Now I’d see them going off, and I’d be by myself on the bus or in the schoolyard, trying not to make eye contact with anyone. My home phone, which had constantly rung when I was getting along with The Group, now never did. I had not a soul to talk to.

  Not even Kelly. She never actively targeted me (and in fact she lobbied unsuccessfully for the bullying to stop), but her entire social existence depended on not angering The Group. I didn’t hold it against her. I had done it at one point to her, too. The cost of breaking stride with The Group was just too great. I was ashamed to sit at home in front of my parents without my phone or doorbell ever ringing. I wanted my mom and dad to think everything was fine.

  The Group had power. Not just with girls, but with boys, too. One of the cute guys in the grade ahead was with the female ringleader and a few of her friends in the hallway. I, like most twelve-year-old girls at the time, had acne. “Try some Windex on that face!” he yelled as I walked by. I held it together in the classroom, but I’d go home and cry, and cry some more. My mom took me to a dermatologist. That helped, but only a little.

  As hopeless as I felt, I knew I could never hurt myself. A young man close to our family killed himself when he was sixteen. His parents heard the shot ring out from the living room. They ran into his bedroom to find him. He had failed his driving test, and a girlfriend had broken up with him. He was a little slow. Perhaps sixteen years of feeling different had finally caught up with him. His poor parents—who had been loving and generally happy—were never the same again. A week later his mother was found wandering aimlessly in a park, crying. A man sat her down and comforted her. The kindness of strangers. The powerful shoulder of a real man. He brought her back home.

  The bullying shattered my confidence. I went from being a social butterfly to keeping my head down and practically running from class to class. I felt relieved when I got to my desk, as at least my teachers would stop the worst of it. It was like what happened at that birthday party, only instead of being one day, this went on for almost the entire school year. Alone and terribly sad, I felt too ashamed to discuss it with my parents, and was powerless to change my reality at school. I went to see a guidance counselor, but he was of no help. Things were different then. I had no solace—I had developed no sport, or hobby, or other potential friends outside The Group that I could cultivate to take my mind off what felt like emotional torture. I went to school and came right home, where I would watch TV by myself, usually eating too much to make myself feel better.

  One Saturday night I was home with my parents. It was dark and cold outside, the dead of winter. The phone rang, and I answered it. I stood in the kitchen, with my parents steps away in the family room. It was the ringleader of the popular kids, who was having a party.

  “Hi, Megyn,” she said. I couldn’t believe it. She was calling me! It felt like a glimmer of hope. “Do you have any idea where all the kids from my party are?”

  “No,” I said.

  “We’re HERE!” they all yelled, right into the phone.

  Then they hung up.

  My parents were looking at me. I held back my tears and said, “Wrong number.”

  It was nighttime and freezing, but I went out into the backyard. I knew the tears were coming, and I didn’t want my parents to have to see it. We’d had a lot of snow recently, followed by freezing rain, so the snow had iced over on the top, and it was possible to glide across the surface on my sneakers. I skated back and forth, hands in my pockets, tears running down my face in the darkness. It was raw, terrible pain, and I can feel it to this day when I think back on that night.

  I talked to my mom about the bullying somewhat, but never told her of the full extent. I felt ashamed of it, as if it were a reflection on me. Not opening up to her more was a mistake, of course, but the truth is, those were different times. It was 1982. Parents weren’t as involved as they are now. Bully
ing hadn’t been recognized as the abuse we now clearly know it is. Having said that, I think if I had shared with my mom the full extent of my pain, she would have intervened, as she had once years before.

  When I was in first grade, a fifth-grade girl had assaulted me on the bus. She was in the seat in front of me, and she leaned over the back, reached down, and slapped my face, over and over and over again. To this day I don’t know why. Maybe I said or did something to anger her. I cannot remember. She slapped me hard, five times in a row. This was the first and only time I had ever been slapped across the face—my mother spanked us, but the most we ever got was a whack on our clothed bottoms. I was crying and confused. The bus driver paid no attention at all. I got off the bus hysterical, and my mother was angry at what she saw and heard. After she comforted me, the first thing she did was call the girl’s mother and lay into her. I remember feeling vindicated, happy that this girl was in trouble. And I got back on the bus the next day. (I wonder if I would let my kids back on that bus again; I doubt I would.)

  With no one intervening on my behalf this time around, seventh grade continued to be miserable. Then, toward the end of the year, a miracle: Heather Sheppard. Heather lived not too far from me, and we had always liked each other but hadn’t really hung out in the same group. At great personal risk to her reputation, she sat down next to me in the cafeteria.

  “Hi,” she said.

  I had never been so grateful for a simple hello.

  Heather and I ate lunch together that day, and many other days. We became friends. All you need is one, my mother had told me, and I learned she was right. All it takes is one brave, decent person to change your life by thinking that you’re worth something. And then there were two. Heather brought around another friend, Jennifer. I remember sitting with the two of them in Heather’s bedroom, listening to Quiet Riot and talking, and feeling for the first time in a long time that I belonged. There is nothing else like it for a pubescent girl—or boy, for that matter. And I was grateful. So very grateful.

  Months later, an amazing thing happened. As quickly as The Group had abandoned me, they came back. I wish I could say that I told them all to go to hell, but I didn’t. I was profoundly relieved not to be ostracized anymore, so I welcomed the détente.

  I saw Heather at my induction into my high school Hall of Fame last September. There she was again, showing up to send her love. I hugged her, and we spoke for a while. She still means so much to me. I wonder if she knows just how much.

  Seeing Heather and other former classmates brought back some painful memories of that time. I thought about how I’d been a different person before the bullying. I was more trusting, more open, more cheerful. Going through severe social ostracism at such a precarious point in your life—it changes you. In an effort not to be hurt again, I had put up a rock-solid wall. Even once I’d recovered socially and felt more comfortable in my own skin, a part of me still felt uneasy about letting others in. I decided, consciously or not, that I could avoid being hurt again by projecting strength. That meant not owning up to any vulnerability, and spinning a narrative about myself that would convince others I was too strong to attack.

  Ultimately, I emerged from the experience both stronger and weaker. Stronger because I vowed never to tolerate that kind of relentless targeting again, and weaker because I still didn’t fully understand the true toll the abuse had taken. It would be many years before I really came to understand what a problem the protective veneer I was creating could be.

  In eighth grade, just to show how insanely fickle middle-schoolers can be, I was voted Most Popular Girl. There was no pleasure in that for me, only a tentative sense of security. It meant nothing more to me than insurance against another round of targeting. Perhaps now I had some power. I resolved that I would do whatever it took not to go through that misery again. I also vowed to protect my friends from bullies whenever possible.

  A short time later, Kelly told me the class ringleader had begun to torment her again—The Group was starting to turn. Kelly had already had her turn of torture as their target.

  “Not again,” Kelly told the ringleader.

  “She’s already been through it,” I said to the mean girl. “Stop.” Amazingly, she stopped.

  To this day, I can handle people who are dumb, lazy, or generally annoying. The one thing I cannot and will not tolerate is a bully.

  Still, I was never able to reclaim my innocence about humanity. The most enduring legacy of being bullied was that I understand on a cellular level that other people being cruel to you is part of life, but that this too shall pass. And that every time you drag yourself to school or your job even when you don’t want to go, you make yourself a little more resilient. It’s like working out. Every time you do it, your muscles break down. The tiny fibers tear a bit. Then they grow back stronger and more defined. And the next time it happens, you can take more weight.

  That doesn’t mean bullying is a good thing. It can create very deep wounds. But enduring it does develop some life skills, as long as you can get past the scar tissue. And until about two decades later, I thought I had.

  That summer after middle school, Mom took me to get my teeth fixed. I took up running and lost fifteen pounds, and entered high school looking like a new person. I wondered if this was the beginning of my Farrah Fawcett moment.

  Looking somewhat prettier and having been through the grind once already, I felt my own power much more in high school. I was done being an outcast, and I refused to put up with any bullshit. I became head cheerleader and president of our high school sorority.

  One day in the locker room, an older girl growled at me and then called me a bitch. Twice.

  “If you call me that one more time,” I said, “you’re gonna regret it.”

  She said it again.

  I let her have it. We ended up rolling on the ground in our cheerleading uniforms, pulling at each other’s hair. (This sounds sexier than it actually was.) The gym teacher had to pull us apart. I’m no advocate of violence, but I do believe in self-defense.

  And the growler? She never bothered me again.

  3

  Silent Night, Holy Night

  At the start, high school was a breeze. I was happy and popular, getting mostly A’s while also finding time to work—first as a babysitter, then as a salesclerk. My planned pursuits, according to my yearbook, were “college, government, and wealth.” For the record, I have no recollection of wanting to be in government.

  By my sophomore year, I was fifteen years old, and the last child living at home. My parents and I loved one another, and still had dinner together almost every night, but I tested the limits like all kids do, including shoplifting once. One Halloween, Kelly’s mother denied us some costume jewelry we wanted from Kmart. So we stole it.

  Later we put the jewelry on at Kelly’s house, right in front of her mother.

  “Where did you get those star earrings and plastic necklaces?” Kelly’s mom asked us.

  “Megyn’s mother gave them to us,” Kelly said.

  Mrs. McGuiness knew better. “Megyn’s mother had two pairs of enormous plastic star earrings and necklaces?”

  “Yes,” we lied.

  “I’m calling Mrs. Kelly,” she said. “And you two girls better go down in the basement and pray to God that she tells me she had two pairs of that hideous jewelry and gave it to you in between the time you asked me to buy it for you and right now.”

  So we did. We went down in the basement and prayed that my mother would lie.

  Yeah, right.

  “I just got off the phone with her,” Kelly’s mom said.

  “What’d she say?” I asked, as if I didn’t know.

  “She said your father will be over to take you both back to Kmart as soon as he finishes his meat loaf.”

  We had to return the items and apologize to the store manager. He was gracious, but told us we could have been arrested, that he’s seen it many times. I never stole another thing.

&
nbsp; Another time, Kelly and I threw a boozy party when my parents were out of town. Stupidly, we took pictures and neglected to hide them, landing us in huge trouble.

  My sister was the first to talk to my mom after she saw the photos on the kitchen counter.

  “Well?” I asked Suzanne.

  “She said you have no life left.”

  Yet another time, Kelly and I told our parents we were going to the Saratoga racetrack, but actually went to see some boys on Long Island.

  “How was the track today?” Mom asked.

  “It was great,” I responded. “We won big.”

  “The track’s closed on Tuesdays,” she said.

  Busted.

  Suffice it to say, Kelly and I weren’t exactly criminal masterminds, but thankfully our rebellious streak was a minor thing. While Kelly was a devilish influence on me, all my memories with her are good ones. We were more like sisters than friends (she spent so much time at my house, my mother used to call us “the boarders”), and we had a lot of fun. It was in no small part because of her friendship that school and life were both going smoothly for me. But that’s often how these things are right before everything changes.

  Ten days before Christmas 1985, my family was beginning to gather together for the holiday, with Suzanne home from college. Pete was attending college nearby and was frequently underfoot, though on this particular day he’d opted to watch a football game with his friends rather than at home. I wanted to get the same class ring Kelly was ordering. Dad said it was too expensive. I kept complaining, and he kept saying we couldn’t afford it.