Speaker 1: Hello, Happy birthday, birthday girl. Are you going out for
Speaker 1: dinner tonight with Rick or anything?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 3: It's not my birthday for another seven months?
Speaker 1: You hang on a second, hang on, I'm.
Speaker 4: Hanging I'm hanging out in traffic, so it's.
Speaker 3: Perfect for you.
Speaker 1: According to my calendar alert, it is your birthday, are.
Speaker 4: You Because I don't know how many times I'm gonna
Speaker 4: say it's not my birthday, and how many times you're
Speaker 4: going to repeat that it is my birthday.
Speaker 5: This year you.
Speaker 4: Didn't Actually, this year, you forgot to call me on
Speaker 4: my birthday, not even an email nothing.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, what about that time you got me an
Speaker 1: ice cream cake for my birthday knowing I'm lactose sensitive.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the man at the roller ring kept
Speaker 1: on knocking on the bathroom door?
Speaker 2: Oh good?
Speaker 3: Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1: From Gimblet Media, I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight
Speaker 1: today's episode. Julia. Julia is a journalist and she's endlessly
Speaker 1: curious about the world around her. Once on assignment for
Speaker 1: The New York Times, she investigated the benefits of bacteria,
Speaker 1: and as a part of her research, she didn't bathe
Speaker 1: for a month. She's done political stories too, where she's
Speaker 1: kept after a source or a story for years, which
Speaker 1: is what makes her reluctance to seek out the answer
Speaker 1: to a question that's been dogging her for over two
Speaker 1: decades all the more curious.
Speaker 4: I think the story begins on a Monday. I'm pretty
Speaker 4: sure it's a Monday, and I was fourteen years old.
Speaker 1: This is Julia, and the question she can't stop thinking
Speaker 1: about revolves around a moment from her own life. It
Speaker 1: all began twenty one years ago in the eighth grade
Speaker 1: at one of the fanciest all girls schools in Montreal.
Speaker 4: I remember wearing my itchy green kilt.
Speaker 1: You have to wear a uniform there, yes, okay.
Speaker 4: That's sort of a puke green uniform with a button
Speaker 4: down white shirt, and on Mondays we had to wear ties.
Speaker 6: We also had bloomers.
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever understood what bloomers were.
Speaker 4: It was just sort of like a balloon with holes
Speaker 4: in the bottom.
Speaker 1: And were they ruffled? No, cursed with a lifelong inability
Speaker 1: to distinguish between bloomers, couloats, pantelats, pantaloons, drawers, and even knickerbockers.
Speaker 1: I was glad for the opportunity to finally sort it
Speaker 1: all out the shape of it, but that's not why
Speaker 1: we're here. So after a fifteen minutes of inquiry, I
Speaker 1: was ready to move on. Okay, sorry, yes, I'll go
Speaker 1: go on.
Speaker 4: As I left morning assembly on Monday and walked into homeroom,
Speaker 4: I looked for my desk and I stopped and looked
Speaker 4: around and it was missing. My desk was gone, and
Speaker 4: that was where it started.
Speaker 1: The desk had been hidden by her classmates, and that
Speaker 1: was just the beginning. Without warning, the girl she'd been
Speaker 1: friends with since third grade completely froze her out, and
Speaker 1: Julia had no clue why. To top it off, her
Speaker 1: best friend was the ringleader, the.
Speaker 4: Girl who used to be my best friend. I guess
Speaker 4: we can give her a name. Let's call her Jane.
Speaker 4: It was just rae. Knowing that she and I had
Speaker 4: hung out at my house and all of the secrets
Speaker 4: music exchanged and all of the fun we'd had, and
Speaker 4: then seeing how she was being now it just it
Speaker 4: was a bit surreal. But yeah.
Speaker 1: Then what started happening was every time she walked into
Speaker 1: the classroom, Julia noticed that the girls would drop what
Speaker 1: they were doing and study her. If she so much
Speaker 1: as scratched her nose or sniffled, they'd furiously take notes.
Speaker 1: It seemed like everyone was collaborating on some big project
Speaker 1: that she knew nothing about. The notes were collected by Jane,
Speaker 1: who buried them in her desk. The girls kept at
Speaker 1: it day after day until finally Julia reached her breaking point.
Speaker 1: She gathered up her courage, and, like the good reporters
Speaker 1: she'd eventually become, decided to investigate.
Speaker 4: I eventually snuck into home room one day during recess.
Speaker 4: It was empty, and I searched Jane's desk, and there
Speaker 4: at the bottom I found a nicely bound document with
Speaker 4: a cover page. And I picked it up and read it,
Speaker 4: and it said one hundred reasons why we hate Julia.
Speaker 4: In my memory, this document I'm holding is one hundred
Speaker 4: pages long, but I'm sure it was only ten. And
Speaker 4: I opened it and inside I read about myself. Everything
Speaker 4: was something about me that they hated. I hate the
Speaker 4: way she walks, I hate the sound of her voice,
Speaker 4: I hate her face.
Speaker 1: After that, Julia started skipping school. Eventually, she told her
Speaker 1: parents what was going on, and they contacted the administration,
Speaker 1: but the bullying continued. Ultimately, her parents decided that the
Speaker 1: only solution was to send her to a new school,
Speaker 1: but Julia still had a few weeks left at the
Speaker 1: old one.
Speaker 4: I became a double agent. I pretended that I was
Speaker 4: coming back the following year, and I didn't tell anyone
Speaker 4: I was changing schools because I had no friends left
Speaker 4: to tell.
Speaker 1: The school year ended and her new life began, But
Speaker 1: because her new school was so close to the old one,
Speaker 1: Julia lived in constant fear that her old life would
Speaker 1: find her. Every day, she'd map her route to and
Speaker 1: from school, carefully avoiding the streets her old friends lived on,
Speaker 1: the coffee shops they hung out at, and for the
Speaker 1: most part, it worked. For those first few weeks at
Speaker 1: her new school, she managed to hide in plain sight.
Speaker 1: She was starting to feel like things would be okay.
Speaker 1: But then one day after school, Julia was upstairs in
Speaker 1: the den doing homework and the doorbell rang. She went
Speaker 1: to her parents' bedroom window and looked down at the
Speaker 1: doorstep and saw standing there her former best friend Jane,
Speaker 1: along with a few of her old classmates.
Speaker 4: I hit the ground as if someone was shelling the
Speaker 4: second floor windows. I was in a state of total panic,
Speaker 4: and I saw them in my mind's eye, there on
Speaker 4: the front steps, waiting for someone to answer the door,
Speaker 4: and I was just on the ground, trying to breathe,
Speaker 4: and they rang the doorbell again and I waited.
Speaker 1: Eventually they left. And this is the moment that Julia
Speaker 1: has fixated on for over twenty years. Why had the
Speaker 1: girls shown up at her door? And what did they want?
Speaker 1: Maybe they'd shown up to bully her, but maybe they'd
Speaker 1: had a change of heart, realized how mean they'd been,
Speaker 1: and were there to apologize. Whatever the case, Julia was
Speaker 1: too scared to open the door and find out, and
Speaker 1: that decision to not go downstairs and face the girls
Speaker 1: who tormented her still haunts Julia. Even listening to her
Speaker 1: talk about it all these years later, it still feels raw.
Speaker 4: I'm thirty five now, and that day has become one
Speaker 4: of my only regrets because the memory of my weakness
Speaker 4: sometimes supersedes all of the strong things I've done since then,
Speaker 4: and it makes me feel weak.
Speaker 1: Even though you were you were just a child, I
Speaker 1: was fourteen.
Speaker 4: I think it's the memory of that fear still somewhere
Speaker 4: in my physiology. It makes me fearful when I think
Speaker 4: of it. I just wish I'd gone down there. I
Speaker 4: wish I'd had the guts.
Speaker 1: What do you think has stopped you up until now
Speaker 1: from just posing the question, you know, like just finding
Speaker 1: the girls and just asking them why they were there
Speaker 1: that day.
Speaker 4: I'm afraid to find out what I did to bring
Speaker 4: on the bullying, because it's very possible that I was bad.
Speaker 4: I think, deep down, I don't really know what was wrong.
Speaker 4: I don't know what was wrong with me, and I
Speaker 4: don't want to know what was wrong with me.
Speaker 1: I mean, it feels like you're being really hard on yourself,
Speaker 1: or being hard on this little kid basically, you know, like,
Speaker 1: do you look at photographs of yourself at that age
Speaker 1: in try not too well? I think you'd be surprised
Speaker 1: by like I mean, I have memories of being that
Speaker 1: age where I thought like I was at weddings and
Speaker 1: I thought I was like flirting with adult women and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And I look at pictures of myself
Speaker 1: and I look like a cabbage patched all.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I think I probably looked like the ten men because
Speaker 4: I had a full set of braces, and then after
Speaker 4: I graduated from my braces, I immediately went to headgear
Speaker 4: neck gear combo. I don't know if you've ever had that.
Speaker 1: But I've only seen them on TV sitcoms.
Speaker 4: So combine that with my glasses, it was a sad
Speaker 4: state of affairs.
Speaker 1: As soon as she graduated high school, Julia left Montreal
Speaker 1: for good.
Speaker 4: Depending on how you know the outcome of that conversation,
Speaker 4: I might have chosen not to leave Montreal. When I'm
Speaker 4: in Montreal once a year, I avoid the neighborhood I
Speaker 4: grew up in where all of this went down, for
Speaker 4: the most part, and those girls are long gone. I mean,
Speaker 4: we're all grown ass women now with careers and jobs
Speaker 4: and kids. And here I am avoiding friends of friends
Speaker 4: on Facebook because I don't want any of those girls
Speaker 4: to know what's going on with my life.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like, had you answered the door and
Speaker 1: they had apologized to you, that that would have changed
Speaker 1: your life in some way, that it would have changed
Speaker 1: your relationship with your past and the city and these friends.
Speaker 4: I think it might have, but I'll never know what
Speaker 4: they wanted to say to me because I didn't answer
Speaker 4: the door.
Speaker 1: It's scary to return to the moment you've spent your
Speaker 1: whole life running from. So when I gently suggest that
Speaker 1: you try to find out why they were at the
Speaker 1: door that day, Julius suggests that maybe the past to
Speaker 1: just stay in the past.
Speaker 4: You know, we move on with our lives. We you know,
Speaker 4: we move on, and it's another thing to open up.
Speaker 4: You know that Pandora's Box.
Speaker 1: Again, Even the language that you're using about fear of
Speaker 1: opening up that Pandora's box, it is so similar to
Speaker 1: the language that you used in describing like fear of
Speaker 1: opening that door.
Speaker 4: So what you're saying is I should really just finish
Speaker 4: the job.
Speaker 1: I think so after the break opening Pandora's Box, in
Speaker 1: spite of her initial trepidation, once Juliet decided to find
Speaker 1: out why the girls came to her door that day,
Speaker 1: she was all in. Watching her take it on was impressive.
Speaker 1: Julia went back to Montreal and reached out to her
Speaker 1: former best friend Jane, who agreed to meet with her
Speaker 1: but said she didn't remember anything. And so, for the
Speaker 1: first time since eighth grade, Julia returned to her former
Speaker 1: school to go through the yearbook and find the names
Speaker 1: of her old classmates. And then she started searching.
Speaker 4: I reached out to probably twelve girls from from my grade. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and in my worst moments, I imagine that none of
Speaker 4: them were going to write back, and it was sort
Speaker 4: of going to feel like, you know, I was on
Speaker 4: the outside of the group again, you know, and that
Speaker 4: the social dynamics I remembered from the eighth grade were
Speaker 4: still in play and all that. But then the responses
Speaker 4: started to trickle in.
Speaker 3: Hello, Hello, Hello, Yes, this is Julia.
Speaker 1: Julia logged hours and hours of interviews.
Speaker 6: Cool and rang my doorbell. I thought you might have
Speaker 6: been one of them.
Speaker 4: I don't think so. Do you remember anything about that?
Speaker 5: Was I there?
Speaker 2: No? Oh boy, I don't remember much about high school.
Speaker 6: I remember one time you were hiding in a bathroom stall.
Speaker 1: But just like Jane, not a single person said they
Speaker 1: could remember showing up at her door that day.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, well, I honestly don't remember doing that.
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, I don't.
Speaker 5: I don't remember anything.
Speaker 3: I just don't remember it, promised you. I have no
Speaker 3: recollection of this.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Sorry.
Speaker 1: Well, what each of them did remember was their own pain.
Speaker 1: There'd been a lot of bullying that year, and no
Speaker 1: one felt safe. Julia heard about one girl who had
Speaker 1: found her desk filled with meticulously cut out images from
Speaker 1: porn magazines. Another girl remembered someone spreading rumors that she
Speaker 1: had aids. I hated that place, said one. It's all
Speaker 1: a big fog of chaos, said another, A dark cloud
Speaker 1: over the class. You never knew who you could trust.
Speaker 1: We were awful, awful little girls. The more Julia heard
Speaker 1: about it, it started to sound like a Stephen King novel,
Speaker 1: and not one of those cutesy ones about clowns or
Speaker 1: talking cars. In almost every conversation, one name kept coming
Speaker 1: up as the person who had it the worst. Even
Speaker 1: Julia acknowledged it. The name was Sarah Taba. Sarah had
Speaker 1: the misfortune of being the only eighth grader who was
Speaker 1: slightly overweight, and as such she was always kept at
Speaker 1: a distance in high school. I was also someone who
Speaker 1: existed on the margins, so I understand how oftentimes kids
Speaker 1: like me, kids like Sarah Taba, become the eyes and
Speaker 1: ears of the school, fidgety, uncomfortable witnesses, forced to watch
Speaker 1: from the wings. I'm reminded of this all the time
Speaker 1: with the friends I went to high school with who
Speaker 1: were more popular than me. Remember the time Robert Ciolick
Speaker 1: wore a three piece suit to school. I ask the
Speaker 1: time Madame Rebert slammed the classroom door so hard the
Speaker 1: clock fell off the wall, the day Sharon Wiener got
Speaker 1: suspended for leaving the schoolyard during recess. Of course they
Speaker 1: don't they were living their lives. But I was on
Speaker 1: the sidelines taking it all in, remembering.
Speaker 3: Hello, Hi, Sarah, Hi, it's been a really long time.
Speaker 6: Yeah it yes, it has.
Speaker 1: Having all these conversations made Julia think about Sarah and
Speaker 1: what she might remember. But when she asked her if
Speaker 1: she had any recollection about the day those girls showed
Speaker 1: up at her door, Sarah couldn't remember anything.
Speaker 3: The first thing I thought of when he said a
Speaker 3: group of girls right in the doorbell, I immediately thought
Speaker 3: it would be a bad experience, Like it wasn't people
Speaker 3: coming looking for you to be like we miss you?
Speaker 5: Where are you?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Grade eight was a bad year at that schirl. Either
Speaker 3: you were being bullied and kicked on or you had
Speaker 3: to turn around and become the bully.
Speaker 6: Yeah, maybe there was something toxic, something dark.
Speaker 3: I think normal bullying. If there's such a thing as
Speaker 3: normal bullying, you can identify the perpetrator and the victim
Speaker 3: and the like. But it was just so pervasive.
Speaker 4: Do you remember the day that you realize that I
Speaker 4: was gone.
Speaker 3: I don't, actually, no, I remember feeling like you were
Speaker 3: just sad all the time.
Speaker 4: Remember you being sad too?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 6: One thing I remember people would call you tubby taba.
Speaker 3: Doesn't surprise me. Yeah, I remember a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: like that. I can't help but think that our grades
Speaker 3: behavior had impacts on the staff. What do you mean, well,
Speaker 3: I actually I'm assuming you knew this, but maybe you didn't.
Speaker 3: But miss McDonald killed herself the following year.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Miss McDonald was Julia's favorite teacher and Sarah's too. Miss
Speaker 1: McDonald had gone to the school as a student and
Speaker 1: later returned to teach biology. She was the fun teacher
Speaker 1: who wore frog ear rings.
Speaker 4: You think that there was something to do with what
Speaker 4: was happening in the school that caused her to commit suicide.
Speaker 3: I think it had a role in her depression. She
Speaker 3: left right in the end of our grade eight year.
Speaker 3: Because what I knew of her and with her school,
Speaker 3: it was her passion.
Speaker 5: She was an old girl.
Speaker 3: She was there teaching. She wanted to instill this love
Speaker 3: of animals and biology and all of us, and we
Speaker 3: were a bunch of brats. I remember there being a
Speaker 3: lot of associations between that pig that she had on
Speaker 3: top of her TV and her a lot of comments
Speaker 3: about her way. Yeah, had an impact.
Speaker 1: Ms McDonald had been hospitalized over the summer, and when
Speaker 1: she came back in the fall, she was no longer
Speaker 1: the biology teacher, but a substitute. The last period of
Speaker 1: the last day she taught before she killed herself was
Speaker 1: a class called Personal and Religious Education. The students considered
Speaker 1: the class a joke. Sarah was there that day and.
Speaker 3: The grade was just running around and doing everything they
Speaker 3: weren't supposed to do in the classroom. She tried to
Speaker 3: get people to calm down and sit down and pay attention,
Speaker 3: and like, I wasn't even trying to teach us anything.
Speaker 3: I don't even know if there was any material to
Speaker 3: cover that day. And then we showed up at school
Speaker 3: Monday morning to find out that she killed herself one
Speaker 3: for the weekend. Oh my god. She was my.
Speaker 5: Role model.
Speaker 3: She was the person who survived the school despite not
Speaker 3: being the stereotypical prefect or perfect girl. She was just
Speaker 3: this wonderful, round woman who rejuvenated life and as an
Speaker 3: overweight teenager. For me, that was like, okay, so you
Speaker 3: don't have to be perfect to achieve anything. Was my
Speaker 3: role model who the next year killed herself and like
Speaker 3: shattered all my dreams that you can go about living
Speaker 3: your life the way you're living your life in this
Speaker 3: environment and succeed, which made me want to completely change
Speaker 3: my body. The only way that I was going to
Speaker 3: get through this school was to lose a bunch of
Speaker 3: weight to gain the respect of these people that have
Speaker 3: basically disliked me since I was eleven, and I did it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've been really over the years, I've wondered about you,
Speaker 4: and then when I looked you up on Facebook, I
Speaker 4: saw pictures of you and I clicked right by them.
Speaker 4: I thought, oh, I have the wrong person. Yeah, because
Speaker 4: you didn't look like yourself, right, So I mean you
Speaker 4: didn't you just stopped eating it sounds like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, in tenth grade, tenth through eleventh grade, and
Speaker 5: then basically destroyed myself in the process because it's an
Speaker 5: illness that I've been battling for the last twenty years.
Speaker 5: It's amazing what your childhood experiences can push you to
Speaker 5: do so that I definitely remember because that's how I.
Speaker 3: Ended up in the situation. I am now I'm actually
Speaker 3: talking to you from outside of a clinic for treating
Speaker 3: eating disorders.
Speaker 6: So I'm really sorry, Sarah.
Speaker 3: It's not your fault. That's the.
Speaker 5: A sad reality of all of this.
Speaker 7: It's like, yeah, please picture you know, my nerdy looking
Speaker 7: fourteen year old self giving you a big hug.
Speaker 3: Oh thanks. I actually do have so much to go
Speaker 3: because we have to have lunch now, but it was
Speaker 3: nice speaking cute and do keep in touch.
Speaker 1: The conversation had left Julia feeling devastated. The scale of
Speaker 1: her own pain had been altered in the face of Sarah's.
Speaker 1: Later that night, I couldn't stop thinking about Julia and
Speaker 1: Sarah's conversation, and as I turned it around in my head,
Speaker 1: a theory began to form. Mss McDonald had died around
Speaker 1: the start of the school year. Wasn't it possible that
Speaker 1: those girls had shown up at Julia's door to let
Speaker 1: her know. Maybe they'd been worried about the way Julia
Speaker 1: had just disappeared from their school and feared the worst.
Speaker 1: Wasn't it possible the girls had meant good that day?
Speaker 1: That they came to the door, and if so, wouldn't
Speaker 1: knowing that changed the way Julia felt about the past
Speaker 1: twenty years and maybe even changed the way she saw herself.
Speaker 1: So I took this last task upon myself. Hey is
Speaker 1: this Christine, Hey Jennifer, this is I found up all
Speaker 1: the people Julia had already spoken with, and I ran
Speaker 1: my theory by them.
Speaker 3: To be honest, I would love to believe that's what
Speaker 3: their intentions were.
Speaker 7: I can't be sure about anything.
Speaker 3: I can't say, yeah, sure, that's it, because I don't
Speaker 3: have a memory of it.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, thank you, bye, all.
Speaker 5: Right, you have a great night.
Speaker 3: Okay, bye bye bye.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, okay, take it easy.
Speaker 2: Hi, bye bye.
Speaker 1: There was only one thing left for me to do.
Speaker 1: I just feel like I'm at a loss, Like this
Speaker 1: whole thing started off as me encouraging you to give
Speaker 1: it a try and that it might be helpful in
Speaker 1: some way. And I don't feel like I brought you
Speaker 1: any closer to knowing what happened at the door that day.
Speaker 1: And I just if.
Speaker 4: There's one of us who's disappointed, it certainly isn't me.
Speaker 4: I don't know whether I was emotionally equipped to open
Speaker 4: the door as a fourteen year old. But to me,
Speaker 4: the important part is is that I opened the door. Now,
Speaker 4: I couldn't have I couldn't have confronted that if I
Speaker 4: hadn't literally done what we decided we were going to do,
Speaker 4: if I hadn't had these phone calls and asked these
Speaker 4: hard questions. And I've forgiven that little girl for being
Speaker 4: so frightened. I was so ashamed, I was so regretful,
Speaker 4: And I don't blame myself for being afraid. Then I
Speaker 4: had every right to be. It wasn't rational. And so
Speaker 4: I think the biggest challenge for me and all of
Speaker 4: this was to allow myself to slip back into that
Speaker 4: fourteen year old girl's skin and say, look, you know,
Speaker 4: I get it.
Speaker 6: It's okay, you know, it's okay.
Speaker 4: I'm proud of who I was. Then It's been a
Speaker 4: long time since I could say that.
Speaker 1: And you feel like that's happened like that, that's happened
Speaker 1: in this process.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do.
Speaker 1: Well that makes me feel better.
Speaker 6: Well, I'm happy to make you feel better, Jonathan.
Speaker 4: I might.
Speaker 1: Ding dong, I'm ding dong.
Speaker 4: Is this the part where I rewrite history and answer
Speaker 4: the door?
Speaker 1: That's right, ding dong, Okay, I'm answering the doorkay open
Speaker 1: the door. What happened to you?
Speaker 6: I change schools and you know why.
Speaker 4: Now that the fern entures returning to its goodwill home,
Speaker 4: now that the last month's rent is scheming with.
Speaker 1: The damaged post, take this moment to dissolve.
Speaker 4: If we meant it, if we.
Speaker 2: Tied, were felt around for far too.
Speaker 1: From things that accidentally talked. Heavyweight is hosted and produced
Speaker 1: by me Jonathan Goldstein along with Chris Neary and Khalila Holt.
Speaker 1: A senior producer is Wendy Dore, editing by Alex Bloomberg
Speaker 1: and Jorge just special thanks to Emily Condon, Maya Goldberg, Safer,
Speaker 1: Lena Chambers, Emily Kennedy, Laura Scott, and the Birthday Girl
Speaker 1: Jackie Cohen. The show was mixed by Hailey Shaw, music
Speaker 1: by Christine Fellows. Additional music credits for this episode can
Speaker 1: be found on our website Gimbletmedia dot com slash Heavyweight.
Speaker 1: Our theme song is by the Weaker Thans courtesy of
Speaker 1: Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Hailey Shaw.
Speaker 1: Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight. Next week's episode will
Speaker 1: be our season finale in anticipation of season two. If
Speaker 1: there's a moment from your past where everything changed, send
Speaker 1: us an email to Heavyweight at gimletmedia dot com.