Once, when I was in school, around the age of fourteen, I ended up in a conversation with a boy who had bullied me in the past. I am not sure why he brought the subject up, but he began asking me about my sexual experiences (at fourteen!!!), wanting to know more about them. We were surrounded by our classmates (though there was no teacher), and I was so embarrassed, I wanted the conversation to stop, I wanted him to go away, I wanted to get away. I think, as well as being embarrassed at the conversation as a whole, I was also embarrassed at the fact that I had no sexual experience (I was fourteen!!), and that this was being revealed in front of my classmates (Davou 140). I couldn’t think what to do, so I pushed a chair into him and walked off.
During this conversation, I think, as I said above, I was motivated in part by the belief that my classmates would lose even the little respect for me that they had at that time if they realised that I had no sexual experience (Davou 147), believing that “all they’ll think of” (Davou 147) in the future was that one conversation. There may also have been an element of belief that I was owed more than this from the people around me, regardless of any perceived social state (Davou 146).
If I found myself in that situation again, notwithstanding the different perspective I have as an adult, I would remind myself of two things: one, while “I may not like the way some people behave, but it’s my choice how to respond to them” (Davou 146) and I should perhaps act more in a more mature manner, and two, that “the sensible approach is to say I want their approval, but I don’t need it” (Davou 147), because in point of fact I don’t need it.
Work Cited
Davou, Bettina. Feeling, Communicating and Thinking: Readings on the Emotional and Communicational Aspects of Learning. Papazississ Publishing: 1998.
