There’s always one, and likely more than one, in every grammar school class – the Picked-On One.
Hayley Humphries was surely it. Milky, transparent skin, with wispy pale hair. Hayley’s body language appeared for the entire world like a deer caught in a car’s headlights - fearful and agitated. But she would invariably try to cover her anxiety up by being cool, only making her seem ridiculous.
Her light-coloured eyes, a little too big for her face, were always hungrily seeking acceptance from her schoolmates. Rather than the welcome she craved, Hayley was spurned and scape-goated at every opportunity.
She was going to end up living to 89 years old, having attained a doctorate in biophysics. She would make it to her advanced age with all of her intellect intact, but never having had children, never being married, and the worst of it, never ever succeeding in being liked by friends or colleagues.
The ironic truth is that such a pitiful youngster will make her peers totally happy. It’s the law of schadenfreude: Hayley made one and all – classmates and her siblings, too - feel glad they weren’t her.
She was popular in a kind of perverted way as there would always be a ready audience for her faux pas which were numerous and exasperated by expectations of failure.
When the family went ice-skating, for instance, a crowd would gather at the rink to watch her clumsy slips. Every predictable fall would be greeted by boos, jeers and whistles. Hayley’s parents, brother and sisters had worked out long ago that she was hopelessly gauche and the more distance they could create between her and them, the happier they would be.
Nothing made the kids happier at school than when Hayley received B’s rather than A’s in her best subject, mathematics. Naturally enough, this intelligent young girl had her confidence eroded by these little hellions because of the unrelenting bullying that went on before, during and after school.
On rainy days, Hayley’s classmates would hide her umbrella at school and enjoy watching her distress as she got soaked in the wet weather – often ending up with a head cold, as her health was delicate.
Simple things like catching the lift from the ground floor at school were a complete nightmare for Hayley as no kid would ever hold the door for her. Rather they would taunt her with, “Use the stairs, that’s what they’re for, you hopeless cretin.”
Through all the difficulties of grammar and tertiary education, one annus horribilis after another, remarkably and heroically, Hayley had very occasional bouts of optimism.
The early years of struggle were transformed by one simple bit of positive thinking. She realised (call her a masochist if you will) that she was one of a select minority on the planet who provided a singular service to society.
The world actually needed people like her and her kind. She was willing to sacrifice her own happiness so that other people could be happy.
It would be written in Hayley Humphries obituary, a direct quote from the octogenarian, “The world needs people like us because they don’t want to be us.”
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4 comments:
Ah, Hayley - the service you performed. Your biographer has gathered up every scrap of schadenfreude that any of us ever experienced and burdened you with the whole lot! My head hurt from empathising with unfairness after unfairness.
I loved how you told Hayley's story so whole-heartedly, then added it all up to a powerful moral at the end. I'm not sure how many of us schadenfreude victims were ever cheered up by the pleasure it gave others, but then Hayley was no ordinary victim!
I was delighted to discover a little anachronism (especially after I'd been suckered into researching HH on Google). - Regarding her peers giving her a hard time in the lifts, when I doubt there was a school in the world that had lifts 80 years ago.
A wild and delightful moral tale.
Poor little Hayley. We all probably went through our moments of being Hayley and shamefacedly remember the moments when we riducled our Hayleys.
I liked the image of Hayley, a timid deer with big doe-eyes. I was in there pulling for her delivering a comeupance but it was not to be. Born a doormat, died a doormat.
My only criticism was that the story lacked dialogue which we were to take on.
Oh dear poor Hayley, and what an awful family. Never mind the school kids. You created a good visual sense of the young Hayley. I would have been interested as to how she had transformed into the old Hayley. I visualise a little old bent over granny-type almost skeletal with those big eyes even bigger in her wasting body.
I wasn't sure if there was a bit of a mixture of tenses here. What wasn't clear to me overall was how Hayley felt about her situation - when young and old. It seems that at some point she may have shifted from caring to not caring about it. It seemed a sad life to me but one that perhaps inevitably she accepted. But I am not sure.
Some colourful descriptive phrases and ideas and I think you created a very good visual of the young Hayley.
A great read. Thank you Eve.
Kerry says:
Hayley is the underdog in life and everyone picks on her for fun but she realises that that is her purpose in life.
Hayley was such a pathetic creature I had no sympathy for her at all. All her torturing was so exquisitely detailed and made all the more desperate for the reader because she didn't fight back. Agonising.
I was a bit confused about the paragraph talking about living to 89. Maybe this info could have been included in the story line further down.
This surely is schadenfreude at it's most debilitating. Thanks Eve.
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