So Many Haters

Four weeks into secondary school and daughter already has beef. In time honoured fashion, her 'friend' tried to diss her in front of her classmates. She said to my perfectly groomed daughter who takes great pride in her appearance: "Your face looks like it hasn't seen cream for a hundred years". To which Clarke replied without a moment's pause, "At least I haven't got frog lips like you!". As everyone is now calling the girl frog lips it's round 1 to Clarke I think. It was cruel, but as any inner city kid knows, you've got to have the art of the comeback down pat in school or your ass, is theirs.
In primary school Clarke would come home upset because she hadn't quite mastered the 'dark dem up' art, and the bad breeds were kicking her ass, verbally. So mama had to teach her a few survival strategies until she got up to speed. Go for the obvious cuss, ashy legs, big nose, dry lips, but don't go for their mama. If they try to make a joke at your expense and you don't have a response, laugh out loud with them, because if they see that it hurts you, that joke will run for weeks. If they're your friend, later on tell them that you didn't like what they said, and they shouldn't say it again. If they do, then ignore them. Stop talking to them. When they're not getting any attention from you they'll soon be confused and wonder why you're not talking to them. We would discuss the strategies, she would try them out, and then we'd have a debrief when she came home. Gradually she grew more confident, and we didn't have to have the conversations anymore. I don't get involved with the beefs, unless there's a fight, then I speak to the teacher. Unlike my mum.

My mum always told me I mustn't let nobody 'tek no liberty' with me. If someone hit me, I was to hit them back, and if I didn't she would come down the school, and make me. And she weren't lying. A girl I used to laugh at because of her stilted style of reading aloud in class said she was going to beat me up after school (yes that was bad of me but you didn't hear her, and she was fifteen for gods sake!). I went home at lunchtime to put on my trainers (standard procedure) and told my mum.
The fifth year was my worse year in secondary school. It was a blur of arguments and fights with the girls in our year who decided they hated me and my best friend because we matched our leather boots to our cardigans, had heard of a distant place called university and spoke french.
A one on one fight was okay, but friends had a tendency to jump in, and her friends were three-quarters of the fifth year girls. So mum decided to come and 'referee' the fight. "If she tink she's gonna beat you up, and have all she friend jump in, she mek a sad mistake." So the fight went down, with mum watching the friends. As you can tell, these were the days of old when someone's mum actually commanded respect, and I stomped that illiterate bitch even though she was a foot taller than me. Hopefully I won't need to do that for Clarke, but if I do, well let's just say, I learned from the best, I learned from you Ma.