When I say that all my friends are dorks, I mean it in a loving way; it’s just that everyone I know passed through an era of awkward, misfit geekiness at some point. (The secret harbored by every hipster is that there is a massive dork still living and lurking deep down inside.) If you spent the whole of your childhood at the top of the social food chain, I doubt you’ve turned into someone I’d much want to have a drink with, mainly because I doubt you’ve developed into much of an interesting person. Sorry (but not really sorry) to be so blatantly biased about this but, if there’s a fundamental truth I’ve discovered in life, it’s that nerds grow up to be interesting people that like cool shit. It’s a fact I love to share with kids on the very rare occasions I interact with them and hear stories of alienation: “I promise you,” I tell them, “the kids peaking right now will become totally lame adults. It’s all downhill from here.”

Anyway, the most bullied period for me was 6th and 7th grade. I had a group of friends who, although not the Mean Girls of the school (too geeky for that), were also not the biggest outcasts. And yet, they were often relentlessly cruel, mostly to each other. You would come to school one random day only to discover that no one was speaking to you for an infraction you didn’t know you’d committed. You could be “out” for as much as a whole week at a time, which meant eating lunch alone and overhearing giggles as they — your very best friends, I mean — overtly made fun of you in class. It was miserable, lonely and just plain awful, and you’d have to pretend to be strong and impervious to their insults and, hardest of all, to cry only in the clandestine safety of the bathroom. And then — poof! — just as inexplicably, you were suddenly back “in” and (gosh, this is so horrible) now free to take part in the exact same spirit-crushing ostracism you’d just been subjected to. There is no one who has perfected the art and science of bullying — especially the kind unseen by teachers and other adults — like The 11-Year-Old Girl. They are vicious little creatures who wield social acceptance like a fucking sword they use at will — to slice you into tiny, dejected little bits. And so it goes.

And yet, I would relive the worst moments. Partly as a sociological experiment and partly…well, partly for the money. When I recall that my friends, after a particularly long period I’d spent “out,” once literally held a mock trial at our regular lunch table to decide if I would be let back “in” (which, btw, strikes me as so mean and geeky now I can’t even tell you), I almost want to go back in time to see it. Maybe to marvel at the ridiculousness of it all, maybe as some form of retroactive therapy. Maybe for the chance to time travel. Maybe just ‘cause why the fuck not. The point is, I say yes to this dare. It scares the crap out of me but, sure, I’m game.