Grab your
vuvuzela... I'm back on message.
This one has taken me a while to get through. Not in the sense of the time it has taken to read (because that, as usual, is somewhere under the two hour mark) but in the sense that I have allowed a lot of time to pass between reading sessions. I fear my reflections have suffered for it... but watch as I disguise that with overfamiliarity with the most recently completed chapters. Wool, over eyes, pulled.
There are two things a child could take away from
this book. The first is that there are worse bullies out there than you, and the second is that there are kids out there being bullied way worse than you. I have never EVER been as mean to a kid as the girls in this book are to Linda/Blubber... and trust me... I've been pretty mean to kids. No sense losing sleep though, because kids have been pretty mean to me too... but on reflection no kid I've ever known, even
Jessica Whiteside who was MY Wendy, was ever so mean to me as these girls are to each other either. To the sometimes bully and the sometimes bullied in all of us, this book gives some perspective to the cruel years of early high school, making the crimes committed seem somewhat moderate and the persecution experienced comparitively mediocre. In other words, I don't need to track down Rubina Whatsit from school to apologise for my part in encouraging her to flash her minge to the whole PE class during an over exuberant display of the 'splits'... nor should I use the medium of facebook to stalk
Jessica Whiteside in the hope that she's been involved in a freak
merry-go-round incident resulting in permanent facial disfigurement and intermittent incontinence.
Here's the story in point form.
- Jill lives across the street from her best friend Tracy Wu who goes to the same school but it unfortunately not in the same class.
- She has an annoying little brother who constantly spouts useless information and statistics (I fear I was this younger sibling in my day, though I would intersperse my 'facts' with 'jokes' from my many joke books... ADORABLE).
- Jill's parents don't understand her (stop the presses!) but her live-in Nanny does.
- Jill is a picky eater. Her primary food is peanut butter sandwiches.
- Each member of Jill's class has to do a presentation on a topic of their choosing and the mildly overweight girl in the class, Linda, chooses to speak about whales. Her presentation includes the sentence expertly adapted to function as the title of this post and from that moment she is ridiculed by her classmates and nicknamed 'Blubber'.
- Halloween is moments later, and Jill decides to dress up as a 'Flenser', which according to Blubber's presentation, is the name for the person who cuts the blubber out of whales. Apparently flenser's wear floppy hats and windcheaters and carry big knives... which is not too far from the truth, I imagine.
- In the meantime, Blubber is victimised out the wazoo. She's forced to introduce herself with her new nickname, is essentially stripped under the threat of physical violence in the girls toilets during lunch break and she is teased about the unhealthy contents of her lunchbox. She promptly goes on a diet and is teased for that too. Points to Linda at this point for not killing herself.
- On the night of Halloween, Jill and her friend Tracy crack rotten eggs into a mean old man's letterbox.
- Despite their disguises, which sound dangerously similar to the outfits often chosen by the Klu Klux Klan, Mr Machinist manages to identify the perpetrators and they are enlisted to rake up the leaves in his yard as their punishment.
- Jill decides that Blubber must have dobbed on them, and accuses her of it when they are brought together coinidentally at a Bar Mitzvah. Blubber doesn't understand the accusation, and in the meantime makes great friends with Jill's annoying little brother, which really gets up Jill's nose.
- Shortly after that, during a rainy lunchbreak spent indoors, Jill and the other girls decide that they will put Blubber on trial and they assign roles to classmates. When Blubber complains, she is locked in a closet and again expertly manages not to kill herself. A level headed nice girl called Rochelle (the only one of her kind) speaks up to say that Blubber needs to have a lawyer for her defence. Mean Wendy says no, but Jill says yes, because her father is a lawyer so she, of course, knows all about it. As Wendy holds her ground, Jill starts to notice how much Wendy throws her weight around, as well as how mean she is as she takes pot shots at Jill and makes a racially insensitive remark about Tracy Wu, so Jill stands up to her and releases Blubber from the closet.
- By the very next day, Jill is an outcast and Blubber is an... incast? Jill is nicknamed 'Baby Brenner', is teased for her penchant for peanut butter sandwiches... and is about to be stripped in the school bathrooms when she throws a logic grenade at Wendy's henchman that undoes the whole power structure of Wendy's regime. Caroline turns against Wendy, who tries to win her back by selling out Blubber, who then also turns against Wendy.
- Now blessed with awareness, Jill befriends that very level headed Rochelle and life is sweet.
It may be a little unrealistic that this one girl can hold enough power to decide who is 'in' and 'out',
Heidi Klum-style, but geez young adults are just mean waiting to happen. No wonder 'we' found our
Mark's, our
Luke's and our Anthony's (?) to get us through the gauntlet of high school. Boys germs are way less harmful to your health than young womanhood.
