Mimi

Not Mimi’s glasses.

I choose to believe that most people who lead happy and fulfilling lives do not have a lot of fond memories of high school. At the very least they would certainly not say that those days were the best days of their lives. Or maybe I'm just jealous. Maybe I wish I could look back through my annuals, fondly recalling wacky escapades with my friends, my first real car date and, of course, Prom. Instead, the mere mention of high school brings back hazy yet cringe-inducing flashbacks of all manner of juvenile delinquency. Those were the days. 

But I do carry a few happy memories from those days. Every now and again something would happen that would actually penetrate the ever-present cloud of eternal doom – the same cloud that played Disintegration by The Cure over and over again on it's own tiny built-in stereo system – that always seemed to be hanging over my head. Something that would give me hope that humanity was not, as it seemed to me looking around the lunchroom every day, hopelessly lost.

One of those things involved a girl named Mimi. Mimi was not my friend, and other than the incident recounted here, I don't remember much about her.

Mimi was the kind of girl you only looked at in passing, and instead of smoothly looking away, your eyes would snag on something that you wanted to fix: the Toni perm, the girl-mullet, the over-sized for the 80s glasses.

The glasses, incidentally, were really bad. It didn't help that they were the same kind our sophomore science teacher wore – huge, pink and blue frames with equally large, swooping arms that inexplicably always reminded me of butterflies. The lenses had some kind of gradated coloring that was pinkish at the top and bluish at the bottom. These are the same glasses you've probably run across in a thrift store somewhere, put on, yell to your friend to look your way, and then said something like, “Whassupp??” to get a laugh. Or maybe only I do that.

The only other thing I remember about Mimi, was, of course, her name. It asked to be relentlessly ridiculed and begged to be mercilessly mocked. My friends and I derived much merriment from rhyming her name with “pee pee” and “wee wee.” This was usually done using a bad French accent. And while I suppose it wasn't very nice to have some giggles at Mimi's expense, we never made fun of her to her face. We were stoners, not bullies. You huff enough Scotch Guard, and almost any name will make you collapse in a fit of giggles.

As far as I can remember, keeping in mind that not only does Scotch Guard cause giggles, it also eats your brain for lunch, no one else openly made fun of Mimi either. That is until junior year and Sonya.

In our sophomore year, Sonya had been a generally annoying girl with pasty skin and a bad perm. Sometime over the summer before junior year, she grew out the perm and spent some quality time at the local tanning salon and reemerged in August as Evan Small's tan, straight haired -- and still generally annoying -- new girlfriend.

Evan had transferred to our school the year before after being kicked out of a private Catholic school in the neighboring town and if we had known who Dylan McKay was then, I'm sure we would have made the connection. As soon as he graced our hallways, obtaining and retelling apocryphal stories about Evan became a regular pastime. As they were told and retold, Evan's exploits became more and more scandalous. Evan hadn't been kicked out of one school, he had been kicked out of every school in Davidson County! Evan didn't just live in a condo with his divorced dad so that he could go to school in our county, Evan lived in the condo by himself because his exasperated parents had washed their hands of him. Evan hadn't trashed a single Jeep sophomore year, Evan had trashed upwards of four Jeeps – in two years!

Whoever Evan really was and whatever he had really done, one thing was certain: Evan liked the ladies. By Junior year he had already dated slutty Angie, non-slutty Angie, Heather, Jackie, and slutty Angie again. I can proudly say I never drunkenly hooked up with him at all. I think.

Sonya may not have been as pretty as any of those girls, but Sonya had skills. Think chrome. And trailer hitches. And the chrome being sucked off of the trailer hitches.

Being Evan's girlfriend bought her instant entry into the popular crowd, but that only made her nouveau Popular, not old school popular, and nouveau popular people could always become unpopular people again in the blink of an eye.

Maybe it was Sonya's shaky social status that caused her to set her sights on Mimi that year. Maybe she needed an outlet for all that pressure and insecurity and she thought picking on someone lower on the food chain would bolster her ego. Maybe Mimi's bad perm and nobody status reminded Sonya a little too much of herself underneath that newfound tan and the shiny blond hair. Or maybe Sonya was just your garden variety sociopath. Whatever the reason, Sonya began bullying Mimi like it was her god-given mission in life.

I don't know exactly how or when it started, but I do remember the first time I saw it for myself. Sonya and her new found popular friends were in the bathroom between classes, re-doing their bangs, an act I think was obligatory for all females in 1989. Out of nowhere Sonya said, “Oh my god, y'all, don't you think Mimi is like the biggest nerd in the whole world? Wouldn't you just totally die if you were that lame? I would die!”

There were some strange looks and nervous giggles and then Sonya continued, “I swear, I would like totally die if I looked like her! What a total nerd! Oh my god, hey, Mimi, what's up?”

Mimi had just come out of one of the stalls. Sonya, had, of course, known she was there all along. That was the whole point.

Everyone looked expectantly at Mimi, waiting for her to react. But she didn't. She didn't even acknowledge Sonya or her friends. She just checked her bangs and left.

As she walked out, Sonya shouted after her, “Whatever! Nerd! She is so sad! I swear, y'all!”

Her friends chimed in with various versions of, “Oh my god, totally” as they all left the bathroom.

Over the next few weeks, it became clear that the scene we had witnessed was not a one time affair. Sonya's bullying of Mimi quickly became habitual and predictable. Sonya would see Mimi in the hall/lunchroom/bathroom and, pretending she didn't know Mimi could hear, she would start loudly talking about what a nerd/geek/loser Mimi was. The script almost never varied. Creativity was obviously not Sonya's strong suit.

If Sonya's shock and awe tactics were designed to break Mimi down, they weren't working. While Sonya called her a nerd or talked about how she'd just die if she were as big a loser as Mimi, Mimi would just keep doing her bangs, keep walking to class, keep getting her books from her locker, keep doing whatever it was she was doing when Sonya first spotted her. It seemed Mimi just wasn't going to react.

Until she finally did.

On that day, I was walking back from lunch with my long-suffering on again/off again boyfriend Steve, who was currently on again. As we made our way to the main intersection, where all the cool kids hung out, we heard one voice rise above the din of the roughly 1,000 kids pushing through the halls to get to their next class.

“Oh my God, Evan, don't you think Mimi is the biggest nerd in the entire world! Would you ever date anyone that ugly? How can she even look at herself in the mirror?”

This was, of course, Sonya. She was lounging next to Evan in the hallway, looking at Mimi who had just passed by them. Mimi, of course, had not responded. She just kept walking like Sonya wasn't humiliating her in front of practically the entire school.

But Sonya didn't like being ignored. She stepped out into the middle of the hallway and yelled at Mimi's retreating back, “I would totally off myself if I were as lame as Mimi!”

That's when it got really quiet. A lot of people stopped to take in the scene unfolding before them, but Mimi just kept walking.

Sonya took a few more steps down the hall, and leaned forward as she shouted, “I swear to god if I were as ugly as Mimi, I 'd kill myself!”

At this point, Evan dropped his usual air of nonchalance and came forward to try to shut Sonya up, but Sonya struggled free and turned back toward Mimi.

This time Sonya addressed her directly.

“Why don't you just kill yourself, Mimi? Just go slit your big fat wrists, you stupid loser!”

“Goddamn it, Sonya, shut the fuck up!” Evan jerked Sonya around, putting his hand over her mouth to shut her up.

But Sonya had started laughing hysterically and she didn't seem to notice or even care how angry Evan was. She also didn't notice what was going on further down the hall.

Mimi had finally stopped walking. She turned toward the wall and set her books down in a neat pile against the wall. Then she took off her glasses, folded them, and gently placed them on top of her books.

And then she started running.

She didn't make a sound, just ran as fast as she could toward Sonya. She ran and tackled Sonya from behind, first knocking her to the ground and then turning her on her back. With her knees on Sonya's chest, Mimi began pummeling Sonya in the face. She hit her again and again and again. She hit her at least once for every single time Sonya had humiliated her and then some.

The crowd of students going to class quickly turned into a circle of onlookers. Mimi had Sonya pinned in the very middle of the intersecting hallways and kids were blocking all four hallways trying to see what was going on.

Teachers were yelling, trying to push their way through to break up the fight, but the crowd wouldn't budge.

Someone began chanting above the commotion, “Mi-mi! Mi-mi! Mi-mi Mi-mi!”

“Oh my god, look at Evan!” someone said, and looking around, we saw him, just on the inner edge of the crowd, punching his fist in the air and cheering along with everyone else while his girlfriend got the holy shit beaten out of her. I don't think I had ever seen him look that happy.

For that matter, almost everyone in the crowd looked positively giddy. If Mimi had been the sacrificial lamb for all of Sonya's self-doubts and insecurities, Sonya was now the sacrificial lamb for anyone who had ever been abused, harassed, mocked or generally disrespected by assholes like Sonya. Here, finally, was justice, proof that the bad guys didn't always win. This unbelievable act of violence was uniting us all: stoners, geeks, jocks, and cool kids. And Mimi was our unlikely, but undeniable, hero.

I don't remember if Mimi had worn herself out by the time the teachers got to her or if they had to actually pull her off of Sonya. I do know that Sonya didn't come to school for a few weeks, supposedly due to emotional trauma, but more than likely because of two black eyes, a seriously broken nose and more than a couple missing teeth.

Mimi was immediately suspended from school. There was a rumor that Vice Principal Doug hadn't wanted to suspend her, but had no choice due to rules about fighting on school property.

And that's all I know. I don't know what happened when they both came back to school, because by then the Scotch Guard had finally caught up with me and I had been sent off to the place by the pond. I never saw Mimi, Sonya, or Evan again.

But here's what I hope happened.

I hope Evan broke up with Sonya while she was home recuperating and started going out with someone else, preferably her best friend or mother.

I hope Sonya's worst fear became a reality:  I hope she was simply ignored and forgotten for the rest of her high school existence.

And I hope Mimi came back to school a new woman. I hope she held her head up high and looked people in the eye. I hope people started saying hi to her when they passed her in the hall. I hope wherever she is today, she is happy and loved and still kickin' ass. I’m still cheering for her.