Melissa Kite Melissa Kite

Melissa Kite was the most unpopular girl in her school

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issue 17 August 2013

If you are bullied at school, you see, you never stop feeling bullied, no matter how old you are. It is absurd that I am 41 years of age and a group of women can still reduce me to tears. To be fair to the bullies, I was an awkward, argumentative, pedantic nerd of a schoolgirl. I know, shocking isn’t it?

To make things worse, I arrived at secondary school from a convent primary not knowing any swear-words. The way I expressed myself — arguing pompously with the other students, arguing pompously with the teachers, and spending lunchtimes in the piano practice rooms playing Bach two-part inventions — didn’t come into its own until the sixth form when I was suddenly declared achingly cool.

Another girl found me hammering away like Geoffrey Rush in Shine one afternoon and was taken by the idea that being a pedantic nerd was the new black.

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