What Makes People Mean

I don’t know what made me think of this story today but I want to share it with you. At a young age, it taught me that things and people are not always as they seem.

Let me start by telling you that I was a Girl Scout and that means I was a salesperson in training. I am genetically predisposed to have no fear around strangers—my Dad was always in sales and my Mom is preternaturally friendly—so I was eager to get out there and sell the Thin Mints and, the far less interesting, calendars.

Our neighborhood was full of kids who all played together, girls and boys. Summers were full of kick the can, army, hide and seek, bike races and bare feet on soft tar alleys. When I would go pimping for the Girls Scouts, I pretty much knew who I was talking to.

But there was this one house.

There was a little girl who lived there, probably my age, who never played with us. She was…”big boned” and a bit on the pasty side…I doubt her bare feet ever sunk into warm tar alleys. The rare times we saw her outside, we’d ask if she’d want to play, in that universally inclusive way kids have, but she’d tell us to get out of her yard. She was snotty and her face always said “Oh, yea!?”

She lived with a woman who looked to be her Grandma. The Grandma was equally unfriendly and would yell at us any chance she got to get out of her yard and quit making so much noise. I was sure she’d been a witch in a fairy tale.

They were mean, so we steered clear.

Except during calendar or cookie season. Look, I had business to conduct. I was there in a professional capacity, not to play, not to have fun, but to earn my way to camp by promoting a nonprofit and further branding their products on a grass roots level.

It would not have been right to skip this house because of personal issues.

So every year, I would go to their door. Usually, the Grandma would answer as if I were a bill collector, ask me with a scowl what I wanted in a voice my parents only used when I was in trouble. The little girl was usually parked in front of the TV and the room was always darker that it should be.

Now, they were not only mean but weird by my standards.

Every year, I would do go to their door—twice a year, mind you, because, as we all know, cookies and calendars have separate seasons. Every year, I would get yelled at for being a Girl Scout and doing my duty. (Do you see my 3 fingers up in the GS salute? So earnest…)

Let’s skip ahead a couple of years. I am now a mature 6th grader and this is my final year of Girl Scouts because, well… I really can’t be bothered. But, being my final year, I am going to kick it out of the park with this cookie thing. I have a spiel for selling these cookies. I remember the houses that buy and those that waffle, and I go back to those who waffle until they break and SUMBIT TO MY WILL. YOU WILL BUY MY COOKIES. AND YOU WILL LIKE IT.

I’m standing on the sidewalk eyeballing their door. Behind that door stands my nemesis. The WEIRD and MEAN lady who won’t buy my cookies and the equally weird and mean girl who, although she has no buying power, really should like me.

Oh, they are going down.

I knock on the door and the Grandma opens. I’m so confused. She smiling at me like a grandma would. She is patiently waiting for me to speak and not slamming the door in my face and not yelling that she doesn’t want my cookies. In fact, she lets me go on and describe each of the cookies—I am getting to do my best spiel. It’s so confusing that she’s smiling at me. And, yes, she would like to buy 2 boxes, please–which is the number people always would pick when they just wanted to be polite. (Because, friends, they used to be $1 a box…) Smiling and polite. She asks me how school is and if I like being a Girl Scout. We are chatting.

I notice the little girl is not sitting in front of the TV and the room seems bright. We’ve become so friendly that I ask the Grandma where the little girl is. Maybe she’s turned nice, too.

The Grandma looks at me for a minute trying to maintain her smile. “Well, she was sick. She’d been sick for a long time, almost since she was a baby. She had something called leukemia. She died this summer.”

As a child, there is nothing more shocking than to hear that a child has died. Even though I was only 11, I understood that the Grandma wasn’t really mean all those years. She was scared and worried and felt helpless. Possibly resented the fact that I was healthy and freckled and being a Girl Scout. And that little girl—she probably wasn’t mean either. She was sick and scared and mad that she couldn’t just be a kid.

I don’t know what made me think of this. But I remembered it as if I was standing outside of that house in Waterloo, Iowa in 1973, my order sheet in hand.

Sometimes it’s not at all what you think. In all honesty, who tries to find out why someone’s an ass or yells for no reason or scowls in response to neutral words. I know I usually pigeonhole those people into the *asshole* category and remove them from my emotional line of site.

I am not always right. Maybe that’s why this memory found its way to the surface—to remind me to take a little more time before passing judgement.

On my honor, I will try.