“Why Bats are the Best”
When I was about 11 years old, going into 7th grade level, my parents made a drastic and unwise move across country to Brewer, Maine (right next to Bangor).
They were miserable, but I loved Maine. I love the landscape, the people, the weather. I wanted to belong, so I begged my parents to let me leave homeschool behind and go to the local middle school.
It was a disaster.
Or rather, I was a disaster. I had been homeschooled and very socially isolated since I was seven, so while I was immediately dumped into all the “advanced” classes at the school, I was incredibly immature. I was hopeful and naive and dangerously clueless.
So naturally I was bullied relentlessly. Eventually, about a month in to being mocked and sneered at, to scare off a boy who genuinely terrified me, I told him during gym class that I was a witch who was going to curse him. I don’t know if I was trying to impress him or scare him, but I remember afterwards the dawning horror of my mistake. He told everyone that I was a terrible witch who had cursed the basketball team (ironic, since I barely understood how basketball was played) and, well, anyone who had anything bad happen to them. A popular kid broke his leg skiing; obviously my fault.
Throughout spring I was attacked, harassed, and humiliated. To give the teachers credit, they picked up on something being wrong, but their awkward inquiries got nowhere, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to admit to being at the bottom of the dung heap of my peers.
People would throw stones at my mother’s car when she picked me up, and I laughed and told her it was a prank.
I was the Witch of Brewer Middle School, reviled and loathed, made even more ironic being that their school mascot was (and is) a witch (the ‘Brewer Witches’ is the name of all the sports teams). I had become the anathema of everything I had hoped I would be when I shyly walked through the doors of the school that fall.
Of course, the teachers puzzled it out and my despondent misery became apparent even to my mother and father. It was “addressed” by the principal, everything calmed down, I became “that weirdo” not “the Witch.” Not that I cared too much, because by then my parents were already planning to move down to Florida.
I remember walking through those hallways, hated and jeered at, poked with pencils and tripped down stairwells, thinking, “they don’t know me, they are wrong about me.”
Which is why I love bats. These adorable, heroic creatures eat insects and fruit mostly, are cute as punch, and rarely hurt anyone–even the bloodsucking versions usually attack cows and goats, not people, and rarely to the point of killing them. Blood sucking bats are actually incredibly small, often smaller than the palm of my hand. No, they are not the huge, fearsome creatures of the night that have been written in to fairy tales and horror stories from time immemorial.
I mean, sure, the whole creature of the night thing is part of the admiration I have for them, but it’s an up-sell. (I’m a creature of the night too so foraging for food by the light of the moon resonates with me. A lot of after-club “dinners” at IHOP at 3am speaks to that.)
Loathed and reviled and feared, bats are actually just pretty cute, and ecologically important. They have big round eyes and pointy snouts, and the most adorable wing-hands. Just watch a fruit bat chomp on a banana:
I ASK YOU I MEAN REALLY?!?!??!
And I don’t know, but I relate to being labeled in ways that are not true, are even the antithesis of my real self, based on a shallow understanding of who I am or a mistaken assumption based on few (if any) facts.
When I left Brewer, I was pretty sick of witches, but had learned to appreciate, and relate, to bats. <3
