Challenge Accepted!

by Celeste Barber

  SS: Shut the fuck up. It’s on.

  TC: On? What’s on?

  SS: IT. IT’S on.

  TC: Hang on. Why? Why are you so angry at me?

  SS: Because. (Adjusts boobs in bikini.)

  Awkward pause.

  TC: I like your earrings.

  SS: Thanks.

  TC: Can you please not bash me? I’m freaking out.

  SS: OK. Can you please tell all the boys that I’ll do nearly anything?

  TC: Um, OK, but I think they already know.

  Is that how it goes down? Or do I just cop it, let her punch me in the face? Oh God, I really don’t want to get punched in the face, and I bruise like a peach. Or is it a hair-pulling type of thing, or given her dad’s martial arts background am I looking down the barrel of fly kicks? Fark! Do I stretch before? Maybe I could tell her some sort of joke and everything will be OK. Yep, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll drop a Barber-style dad joke to create a distraction and run as fast as humanly possible to the library. (Note to self: find out where the library is.)

  The whole morning, I played it cool. I thought if I just acted like it wasn’t a big deal, then it would go away. When people asked me about it EVERY TWO SECONDS, I wouldn’t lift my head from my work, acting relaxed: “It’s all good, nothing’s going to happen. I don’t know what she’s even talking about.”

  Then lunchtime came. The bell went at 1:10 p.m., and people ran out of their classrooms. They pushed out of the class doors like the people in Japan shove themselves onto overpacked trains. They ran and got their lunch, grabbed a drink, and started running down to the oval (she was quite considerate to allow that time).

  I packed up my books slower than a sloth on heroin. My heart was beating hard in my chest, and I felt tears streaming down my face. I was petrified.

  Mr. Gazel, the greatest math teacher in the history of numbers, asked if I was OK.

  “Yeah totally, I’m like totally fine and OK.” He gave me a kind smile and left.

  I walked out into the quad, and it was like a ghost town. There were a few late kids running down to the oval, shoving past me and shouting “you’re going to get fucked up, Barber” as they passed.

  Fuck fuck fuckity fuck, this was it.

  When I got down there with my friends, I could tell they were nearly as freaked out as I was; we were running around like idiots, and we were all talking about boring, mundane stuff in really loud, over-the-top voices. Because that’s what you do when you’re facing immediate death and don’t want to let on that you’re scared shitless.

  Me: Why do you think Ross is so obsessed with Rachel?

  Friend 1: Because she’s amazing.

  Me: You’re right.

  Friend 1: So anyway, my face totally couldn’t believe the color of the sky.

  Friend 2: Yeah, me either.

  At 1:35 p.m. (fashionably late: classic pretty-girl behavior), Sexy Sister came down to the oval with a posse of bitchy prepubescent sexy siblings, who had determined looks on their faces that put feminism back forty years.

  My friends and I saw them, along with the rest of the school, and like a deer in the headlights we froze, staring.

  Friend 1: Oh fuck, is she going to do it now?

  Me: Jesus.

  Friend 2: I’m freaking out.

  Me: YOU’RE freaking out? I think I just soiled myself.

  Friend 1: Me too.

  With that they took off. They got out of there so fast that Friend 1 even managed a cartwheel as part of her exit. I don’t blame them; I mean, I’m a loyal friend, but if the roles were reversed and someone wanted to bash one of my friends, I’d like to say I’d stay by their side to the bitter end, but that would be a big, fat lie.

  There I was, alone and sweating. I started to walk back up to class; I thought that if I just kept my head down and walked past her, she would see that I was weak and leave me alone, and I was fine with that. I was OK with looking “weak” or “scared”; I just didn’t want to get punched in the face or, worse, fly-kicked in the boob.

  As I came side by side with her she stopped in her tracks.

  “Breathe, Barber, just breathe,” I said to myself.

  I was just about past her when she launched herself at me, pretending to throw a punch. I flinched and, like a bull at a gate, took off out of there so fast I farted.

  As I ran up to the library I could hear everyone laughing. I knew what they were laughing at. Me. They were all laughing at me. I didn’t care. I knew I looked like an idiot, and I didn’t care. When Sexy Sister launched herself at me, it had been so subtle that I doubt anyone but me even knew what had happened. But I was so petrified it felt like Mike Tyson had just swung at me because I’d petted his pet tiger without asking.

  I thought I should have been brave and looked her in the eyes, let her know she couldn’t intimidate me. All the antibully advice that we are given is to show that you’re not scared, that no one can intimidate you, that you’re the boss of your own destiny, and if you confront the bully, then they will back down, right?

  Well, I didn’t want to. I was scared and I wanted to run away; I didn’t care if this made me look weak. If this made it seem as though I was backing down and she had in some way “won,” good on her. If this was winning to her, I’d happily emcee the medal ceremony at a reduced fee.

  My gut had said get the hell out of there, so I’d backed myself and did exactly that.

  I ran past the science labs, searching for the library. I looked over my shoulder to see if she was gaining on me or if her henchmen had weapons they were planning on throwing at me, but no one was there. Everyone had remained on the oval, pointing and laughing at me. I didn’t care; I kept running.

  As I stumbled through the doors of the library, I heard some teachers trying to swap their lunch duty so they could go and “watch the show.” Right in that moment I knew I had made the right decision. I wasn’t at that school as entertainment. Sure, I’m happy to make people laugh, but fuck that.

  I had heard so many people throw my name around over the course of the day—“You’re fucked, Barber”; “Oh God, Celeste is going to get smashed”—that I got all Rain Man on myself and felt I needed to reclaim my name. In the deserted library, I pulled out a pen and some paper and through tears started writing my name over and over again. “Celeste Barber. Celeste Barber. Celeste Barber. Celeste Barber.” After writing this over and over I signed off with “is the best, chuck out the rest.”

  This was around the time when the two most popular girls in school also hated me. Jeez, when it rains it pours. Having the power that comes with high school mean-girl status, these girls managed to get the entire Year 8 class to ignore me for the whole school year. Well, that’s an exaggeration; they didn’t get everyone to completely ignore me. There were daily “no one likes you, you dumb shit” and “shut the fuck up, you ugly slag” comments thrown my way across busy play areas while I sat alone compiling monologues and writing jokes.

  I arrived on the early bus and would walk up the long entrance to our school, under the massive cross that overlooked us all. #underhiseye.

  But this particular day was weird. Janet, my latest unofficial bestie, was there but not keen to talk, and considering we had been on the phone the night before talking about the pros of moving from pads to tampons with applicators, I was a little thrown.

  “Are you OK?” I asked, confused.

  “Yep,” she said as she briskly walked off toward the two popular girls.

  Not one to let something go, I walked up to another mate, asking if Janet was shitty with me, to which they responded, “I don’t know, you’ll have to ask her.”

  I was starting to get nervous. “I just did, fuckface! What’s going on?”

  This mate walked off to join the cast of Mean Girls too, and I was left alone. I tried to ignore them. But you’d have more chance of me growing wings and cycling to the moon on a hamster than ignoring something. I marched up to the group, my heart beating up into my double ch
in, and they all started giggling and looked at their feet. Classic arsehole behavior.

  “What’s going on?” I said in a shaky voice. I was ignored.

  Shit.

  “Have I done something wrong?”

  Bitch 1 turned around to reveal her large forehead and responded out the side of her small-lipped mouth: “Fuck off, no one likes you.”

  Everyone laughed. WHAT?

  Now, I’m not innocent, not innocent in any way. I’m not someone who says something to keep the peace. If you piss me off, I’ll tell you.

  But this was next level. In that moment, all my mates changed; they went from fun and kind to scared and mean. I know kids and teenagers can be shit—trust me, I’m a stepmother to TWO teenage stepdaughters. But these bitches were being bitches just because they could.

  After this embarrassment, I walked away. I’m no fool; I was used to being a part of the joke but was not comfortable being the butt of it.

  I walked straight back down to the buses to greet my friend Alyssa, whose bus was always the last one to arrive. Alyssa was a hippie; we called her Sis because she was like a sister to everyone. She was sweet, kind, and always smelled like home. Alyssa would have my back, or at least stand next to me while others tried to stab me in it.

  She got off the bus, and much like when you hit your head at school and you say you’re fine, then the school calls your mum and as soon as you hear her voice you start to cry, when I saw Alyssa I broke down. I was so sad.

  “Everyone hates me,” I said through tears and a shaking voice.

  She said nothing, just kept walking with her head down. “Sis?” I caught up to her, panicked, and walked alongside her.

  “I don’t know what’s going on. Janet isn’t talking to me, and Debbie just told me to fuck off.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” Alyssa said, not lifting her head.

  Oh God, I felt sick. Sis was everyone’s friend. She became student body president, and rightly so; she was lovely and smart and kind. So when I saw that even she wasn’t talking to me, I knew it wasn’t going to be a fun time.

  I was confused. I racked my brain—what the hell had I done? Had I talked smack about someone behind their back (when a prepubescent teenager does this, it’s punishable by death)? I couldn’t think of what I could’ve done to warrant such anger and hostility from every kid in the school.

  So, in that moment down by the buses, I took a deep breath, pulled myself together, and made a decision. I just decided I didn’t care. I didn’t care to investigate; I didn’t care about begging for forgiveness for something that no one was going to help me understand. I realized all people wanted was to make me feel like shit, and I didn’t care. I had bigger stuff going on. I had drama monologues to learn, Friends episodes to watch and rewatch, dancing concerts to show off at. These bitches were the least of my worries.

  This continued for an entire year. Bitches 1 and 2 had used their mean-girl power to persuade everyone in Year 8 into thinking I was a loser who wasn’t worth talking to. If anyone talked to me, they were grilled by the bitches about why.

  Over the next year I could count on one hand the people who didn’t abuse me.

  I have to give credit where credit’s due: these girls must have put in a lot of work to get everyone onside. This was before emails and texting, so I’m not sure how they got the message out or kept it going over the school holidays. Letterbox drops? Chinese whispers? I guess there were sexual favors in return for screaming shit at me, but I’m just speculating. It was a big job, and one they pulled off (pardon the pun) successfully. Well done, arseholes.

  People say when you’re getting bullied the best thing to do is walk away, ignore it. This will show the bully you don’t care, and they’ll get bored and leave you alone. The usual advice is that your actions will then affect the bully and they will hopefully back down.

  I say walk away because YOU don’t care, because YOU are bored with it. Who fucking cares what impact it has on THEM! Sort yourself out and forget about them.

  My friend’s daughter is copping a lot of shit at school at the moment, and despite wanting to march into the school and make heads roll, I told her to focus on herself—not because it will show the haters that she doesn’t care, but because she is worth focusing on, and it gives her the power and opportunity to find out who she is and what she wants.

  It’s so hard—I get it, trust me, it’s fucking hard. But you need to treat it like a rite of passage, a voluntary, self-inflicted rite of passage.

  On the second to last day of Year 8, Bitches 1 and 2 had decided I was worthy of acknowledgment and they allowed the rest of the class to start talking to me. Great! The horrible feelings of loneliness and dread had gone, but it didn’t change me—I just had more people to talk to. That’s not to say it didn’t affect me, because of course it did, but looking back on it I don’t remember it being the main experience of my school years. Because I didn’t care enough about what they thought.

  I knew what I wanted to do with my life and I fucking did it, and the cast of Mean Girls tried to get in my way and make me focus on them and their bullshit, but I didn’t care enough. I wasn’t interested in their shit. The crying and the changing of schools that my parents had suggested all played a part in character building, but the way they treated me didn’t shape who I am. Only Nutella can do that.

  I remember around this time overhearing someone say that your school years are the best years of your life and thinking, “Well, if this is the case, I’d best make my way to the bathroom and fashion some sort of noose out of my tie, because if this is as good as it gets, I’m out.”

  But I knew it wasn’t. I knew I was ready to get the fuck out of there and start smashing the whole personality-gets-you-places thing. I don’t advise going and trying to get people to bully you in the hope of building character, but I do advise that if you are being bullied, or people are just constantly being punks to you, then get busy. Get your shit together and focus on what you like. If you like handball, get a tennis ball, find a brick wall in the quiet part of the school, and play until the bell goes. If you like chess, focus on whatever it is that chess players focus on. If spelling is your thing, then GET SPELLING, YOU AWESOME LITTLE NERD! Don’t fucking worry about them, because God knows they are more interested in you than you should EVER be in them.

  Just back yourself, and if you want to run scared and cry under your bed for six weeks because that’s your safe place, then DO IT. Don’t worry about what lessons it will teach the bully or what message you are sending the world. It’s not your responsibility to take on these things—it’s your responsibility to look after yourself.

  And if it doesn’t let up, send me a message, I’ve got an army of over four million who will happily come and kick their arse for you.

  P.S. Sexy Sister now runs a successful health and lifestyle blog about kindness and living your truth. She also writes columns on how important it is to look good and what it was like to be bullied at school. Bless.

  The One about Falling in Love with Comedy

  The school bitches were hurtful, but it never threw me off the scent of working toward who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do.

  And it was around this time that I first fell in love with comedy.

  Everyone loves comedy, right? We all love laughing at people when they fall over, or when someone voices the inner monologue of what goes through a dog’s mind when it’s licking its own anus. I mean, we all love that stuff, right?

  But I mean it was around this time I really fell in love with comedy as an art form.

  It was a Tuesday in 1995, and I had only a handful of friends because of the two Mean Girls wannabes—ah, the power of the bitchy, insecure vagina.

  Friends was on Monday night at 7:30 p.m., and it was my favorite show ever. I loved the banter, the setups, the chemistry, and of course the hair. I loved it so much that I based my friendships and daily exchanges around it. (Maybe that’s why I didn’t have friends
, not because of the bitchy vaginas—hmm, interesting.)

  I loved WATCHING Friends, but I didn’t SEE myself in it, so I didn’t understand how I could do any more than just admire it like the rest of the world. (Well, the rest of the world except my mum, dad, and a guy I went to university with.)

  I never thought I could ever be on a show like that other than as a talented extra at Central Perk, sipping pretend coffee and bathing in the shadow of Gunther. And I was totally fine with that; I was so happy just to enjoy what I saw and wait my turn to be a funny extra and just work on my talents as a tap dancer.

  I have always been loud and full-on, and it’s kind of fun for, like, five minutes. People will look to me to fill silences when a new group of friends is hanging out, and I’m the one who will banter with the sassy retail assistant and end up getting everyone a 10 percent discount. But then it can get old and, well, full-on.

  On Friends, I saw three really pretty ladies playing really pretty, clever, safe, and “what is to be expected of ladies in comedy” characters, only I didn’t know it at the time. I wanted to be on the show; it was on my bucket list along with seeing the northern lights, being interviewed by Oprah, and meeting Beyoncé’s twins.

  But I was too big, in both the physical and character sense, and I was at the age where transitioning from training bra to underwire was a real emotional roller coaster and took up most of my time (shout-out to my DD and above ladies!), so I had a lot on my plate.

  Every Monday night I would finish dinner early and make sure I was in front of the VCR (for my millennial readers, google it; it’d be too hard to explain without pictures and judgment) with a fresh VHS tape at 7:15 p.m. ready to press “Record” at 7:29 p.m.

  I would record Friends while watching it. I think that this act alone proves my dedication: no millennial would stuff around with the VCR during an episode of Vampire Diaries, get the timing just right to catch the opening credits and theme song, and be present enough to pause out the ads but make sure each scene was recorded in its entirety so as not to miss any Phoebe and Joey comedy gold. No way! They are too busy sending dick pics to their boyfriend’s best mate, which is an art form in its own right.