Sometimes when I’m writing my column I begin to wonder if my memories are accurate. Such was the case last week, when I wrote about the kids who used to be mean to me when I was in school. I began to wonder if the kid I’d been told died in a fire really died in a fire — maybe I was remembering the story wrong. Or whether those kids weren’t really as bad as I thought they were. Fortunately, over the weekend I met up with my friend Cindy in New York City, and her memories seemed to dovetail with my own. After talking to her, what really stands out is how ridiculous and damaging the cliquishness of middle school can be.

The boys we remember being particularly objectionable were called The Rednecks. And not just by us, but by everyone — including The Rednecks themselves. They were mostly older — kids who had stayed back or had an extra year, which made them a good year or two older — and bigger — than most of the kids in our class. They were hunters, and dressed in old flannel shirts, work boots and jeans. They stood in stark contrast to the group of boys everyone called The Soces. The term, which came from the S.E. Hinton novel “The Outsiders,” is short for “social” and describes people who are preppy. Of course, my friends and I had a name, too. We were called The Dexters. I’m not sure where this term came from, but it meant we were in the more advanced classes, and did well in school. Being called a Dexter was an insult, but I remember finding ways to co-opt the term. For instance, Cindy and I hand-wrote a newspaper we called The Daily Dexter.

All of this now strikes me as totally absurd, like some bizarre parallel universe I dreamed up in my sleep. But Cindy assured me that, yes, this is really how it was — there were Rednecks and Soces and everyone else. And like me, she had a story of putting an end to teasing by responding in a somewhat violent fashion.

It was during an assembly in high school, she said, when one of her tormentors sat behind her and started saying mean things. Suddenly, she lost it. In fact, she doesn’t even remember what happened — whether she actually hit him, or just flailed about. “Arms were flying,” she recalled.

The incident resulted in meetings with two different teachers, one of whom was helpful, and one of whom was not. The helpful teacher suggested strategies for dealing with her tormentor that didn’t involve violence. The unhelpful teacher said something along the lines of, “But don’t you think by being so quiet you brought this upon yourself?”

This reminded me of the startling statistic I learned while researching the bullying article I wrote last week (which you can read here) — that teachers intervene in bullying less than 10 percent of the time. In any case, after that episode, the boy left my friend alone. Since he had been harassing her since the fifth grade, I suggested she should have flipped out years earlier, and nipped his unacceptable behavior in the bud.

I talked to my best friend from high school the other night, and asked her what she remembered about the mean kids from our high school. In high school, I practiced an avoidance strategy — changing my seat in my freshman English class, for instance, to distance myself from a pack of mean boys. This is why I don’t think these boys were true bullies. As my friend pointed out, they were mean if you wandered into their line of vision — maybe they were bored? — but they didn’t necessarily go out of their way to bother you. “They might say something mean to you in the hall,” she recalled. “But you could walk past them 19 times in a row, and they wouldn’t say anything. Then, on that 20th time, they might make some stupid remark.”

Perhaps this is why, when I plumbed my brain for stories about mean kids in high school, I had a hard time coming up with any. For the most part, the mean kids in my high school were inconsistent, and I succeeded in avoiding them. But there was always the possibility that they would be mean to me, which cast a pall over my daily existence. Still, just when I was beginning to think the mean kids were actually fairly benign, my best friend reminded me that one of our friends had his collar bone broken in gym class, when some big, mean boy shoved him. “Never mind,” I said. “Those kids really could be pretty awful.”

I’m not sure what this all adds up to. But I know that most adults who were bullied or picked on seem to have pretty vivid memories of these incidents — they don’t just disappear, or fade away. I also know that I’d like to travel back in time and ask that teacher who suggested Cindy was someone responsible for her own bullying just what in the world he was thinking.

For my Saturday column on bullying, click here.

JACOBY ELLSBURY IS AWESOME

Oh, and a special shout-out to Jacoby Ellsbury for stealing home in last night’s Red Sox victory over the Yankees. I’m a huge Jacoby Ellsbury fan. When he’s on, he’s one of the most exciting ballplayers to watch.

Got a comment? E-mail me at sfoss@dailygazette.net.