When she was eight, Alice Henderson briefly held the world record for filling her mouth with marbles.
Alice is Bob Morton’s brother’s great-granddaughter. That’s a mouthful isn’t it? Anyway, Bob treats Alice like his own great-granddaughter. Alice calls Bob, “Uncle Bob.” So do her parents and grandparents.
Alice is thirteen now. She is in Year 7 and her high school is near where Bob lives so she comes over for afternoon tea every Wednesday. Bob and Alice chat about this and that. Well, they did until recently anyway when Alice decided that she didn’t want to go to school any more.
As a younger child, Alice was a joker, full of joy. And it’s true about the world record. Her parents organised the people from the Guinness World Book of Records to make it official.
Alice always seemed to have lots of friends. She was good at school and good at netball. Not especially good – at school nor at netball – but good enough.
Something changed this year when she started high school. Her parents had heard about lots of nastiness at the expensive girls’ high school nearby so they had sent her to the local Catholic secondary school. Well, there was nastiness there too as it wasn’t long before Alice started making excuses about going to school. Mystery stomach aches seemed to pop up most days.
Alice’s parents, Sophie and Dave, couldn’t work out what was wrong but they knew something was wrong as Alice changed from joyful to sad; smiling and laughing to sullen and withdrawn. They were worried sick.
Sophie and Dave met with the school but the school didn’t have any answers. They didn’t know Alice “before” after all.
Alice remained silent so Sophie took her to the doctor. From there, Alice started to see a psychologist and, little by little, she started to open up to her parents. No surprises but the source of the unhappiness was “the mean girls” at the new school.
As Sophie explained, you used to be able to go home and get a breather from school and friendships and general teenage friendship dramas. Now, the mean girls followed you home. Even into your bedroom. The mean girls contacted you relentlessly on your mobile phone, your iPad and your computer. There was no getting away from them.
The “mean girls” had done nasty things like call Alice names and they had isolated her from some catch ups on the weekend and from some parties.
Apparently, one of the “get to know you” activities at Camp in the first week of the school year had been to tell the other girls something that no one knew about you. Alice told the group about her Guinness World Record for filling her mouth with marbles. Bad idea it turns out as the meanies then called her silly names like “Big Mouth” and “Marbles.”
Sophie and her Mum, Penny, had come to see Bob recently and, of course, they were talking and worrying about Alice.
Bob said to them, shaking his head, “I still don’t understand why Alice is so upset. It all just sounds like silliness to me. Nothing that dreadful.”
“All you want to do at that age is fit in Uncle Bob. You don’t want to be different. And you want to be included,” Sophie replied.
“Well, Sophie darling, I am an old man. Alice is a young girl. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if I don’t think the mean girls are really that mean. What matters is what Alice thinks.”
“That’s right Uncle Bob,” said Penny. “Alice is a thirtee year old trying to find her place in a new school and find a new group of friends so all this was dreadful to her. And, of course, it was all amplified by the 24/7 social media kids nowadays have to live with.
Alice has been internalizing everything. Stewing on it and suffering in silence. It was awful. Heart breaking for Dave and I. She just wouldn’t talk to us. Now that she’s seeing the psychologist and sharing what she’s feeling with us, we can get something sorted. ‘Put strategies in place’ is how the psychologist puts it.”
Whatever they were doing, it was working. The “old” Alice had started to return. She had even come over last Wednesday for afternoon tea with her Uncle Bob.
About the author
Leonie Jarrett lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband of more than three decades, her four adult children and her two Golden Retrievers.
Leonie has variously been a lawyer and a business owner.
Now that she is semi-retired, Leonie is loving writing rivers of
words. She hopes that the reader likes floating in her rivers.
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