How many times have you got the feeling (or been smacked in the face with the fact) that you never really know someone? I’ve been getting it quite a lot recently – going on a Christian camp and staying in a house full of girls being completely honest with one another for 10 days really reveals a lot of secrets. Most of them were only rather surprising in a “wow, I never would have thought that of her, she’s so ___!” way, although a few were rather more heart-wrenching. More than once I felt very naive and uncomfortable about the fact that I didn’t really know people as well as I thought I did.
Today I found out something far more shocking. Many of you know that I go to an all-girls school, which my out-of-school friends tell me is “weird”. We get much closer to the staff than they do at their schools, and often heavily involve them in special occasions, especially the non-teaching staff such as the nurses and tech guys. We’re on a first-name basis with them, and often stop and chat to them, especially as we get older. While we often get a lot of teachers leaving, they usually stay for ages, and are sort of “landmarks” of the school, and if they do leave, we’re always really sorry to see them go.
This morning I logged onto Facebook to find an article flying about amongst my school friends, about one of our previous IT guys getting arrested in the US for sexually abusing some young boys. Although he left last year, he’d been working at school since before I joined, and I remember that he was always willing to join in with stuff, and friendly and chatty – I’d never spoken to him beyond asking help with dodgy computers, but I remember him judging dance competitions we’d organised, and dressing up in wigs and stuff.
It’s different than finding out that your over-confident, flirty friend is terribly insecure, and it’s kind of worse in a way, because as members of staff you implicitly trust them to at least be normal.
I wonder if you ever stop wondering if you really know.
I went to an all-girls school for high school, too. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I know what you mean about other people not understanding. I think it’s one of those things you have to experience for yourself.
I’m sorry that you had to find out something so horrible about one of your friends.
This is so true. It just goes to show that you really can’t judge a book by its cover. Even if you think you know someone really well, there will always be something about them that surprises you.
Sometimes when you find out something like that it’s not that surprising, though.
I know exactly the feeling. Usually it occurs to me when I think I know someone enough that I can talk to them about something, but it turns out that they really aren’t like what I thought at all.
I went to an all girls grammar school, and we had a male IT technician. I was really good friends with him, I made websites for the school and he helped me build my computer (which I still have, six years on) and spent many weekends and evenings at school helping him out around the place. One day he stopped talking much to me, completely out of the blue. Later he was fired for having sexual relations with another student – after a huge court case that nobody would tell me about.
Another of my school friends (not the one he had sexual relations with) kept in contact with him, and I asked if I could have his email address so we could chat, but he didn’t want to speak to me.