Mean Kids

One finds that, rather harmfully, the meanest people one will ever experience generally occurs in junior high and high school, when people often look to carve out their social niche by putting others down. This suggests, then, that getting through high school is getting through the worst life has to offer. Unfortunately, the lack of day in and day out verbal virulence softens one as they age, so that adulthood, while not as much of a trial as high school, still seems to each of us every bit as cruelly difficult.