Once, when I was shopping at Ames, I ran into a girl I had gone to school with named Candy. That’s what she said - “K, I went to school with you. Remember me, it’s Candy!”
She was chatty, and I was impatient and not feeling well. I’d never liked her much, and she was one of the people that often would make catty digs at me to feel better about themselves. I never-ever let them know that any of them had ever hit the mark, so they never got any satisfaction out of it, but, of course, it hurt.
I also wasn’t feeling very good because I needed more clothes and I didn’t have much money. It has been very hard to maintain a professional’s level of wardrobe on a part-timer’s salary, especially since I am fat, so second hand shops are out. My girlfriend is often impatient with me when the material isn’t quite right, or the workmanship is poor or the color is not suitable, and she had just snapped at me again. I know that she doesn’t mean anything by it, but it always makes me feel bad. Needless to say, Candy was not seeing me at my best.
As always, I tried to seem friendly, but I was feeling quite distant. Candy looked pretty bad- she didn’t look healthy and she looked tired and broken, like a lot of the people who I went to school with do now. She was working at the store. She seemed quite eager to tell me about her life, and seemed really lonely. But I remembered the teasing, and I brushed her off. I heard about her three kids and her husband briefly, and didn’t tell her anything about my life. I got away as soon as I could and I know that she was a little hurt by it. I finished up my shopping quickly and left, still feeling quite awful.
It wasn’t until a couple of days later that I realized that I’d gone to school with TWO Candys. And this one isn’t the one who teased me. We were never friends, but I went out of my way to make sure that I didn’t have any friends, so that wasn’t surprising. I remember hearing her defending me more than once to her friends and to others.
I had forgotten her married name because I didn’t care when she told it to me.
And I brushed her off because I remembered the teasing of one Candy more than I remembered the kindness of another.