It was the last math class of our senior year of high school. I'd always worn my Fordham hoodie on dress-down days, so it's safe to say that it was pretty well-known that I was a huge Fordham girl, especially after college decision day.
The girl who sat next to me said out of the blue, "so, you really are going to Fordham, huh?" When I told her that I was, her response was "Yikes!" and proceeded to tell me the acceptance rate of my school. She was hinting that my school was a weak school. I was really caught off guard that someone had the audacity to bring this up, so I just said, "I really don't know Fordham's stats, sorry". She then decided to end this conversation by telling me that the acceptance of the school she was going to was much better than the school I was going to.
To be honest, I was kind of annoyed at this exchange at first. But, about a year later, I realized that she who laughs last laughs the loudest. The joke was essentially on her. When I got to campus this past fall, I had learned that this girl had transferred out of that academically rigorous university in Louisiana with a "better" acceptance rate than Fordham. But the burning question is: where had she transferred to?
Only Fordham, of course. This girl wound up transferring to a university she had purposely insulted just a year and a half earlier. Little did she know back then, but her words had found a way of biting her back. It's certain that she's fully aware of how her words got back at her because she has never brought herself to say "hi" or to even look at me whenever we're near each other on campus. Only about four girls from each graduating class from our small all-girls school end up at Fordham. There are about ten thousand undergraduate students at the university. So, when a fellow alumna steers clear of you, it's pretty obvious they know that they did something wrong.
Even though this story is far from earth-shattering, it still provides the rather important concept of watching what you say and thinking before you open your mouth. Words have a way of coming back to haunt you, even if you don't expect them to. It's better to keep certain thoughts inside your mind rather than to let them run free. Who knows: you may wind up embarrassing yourself in front of the person you shared these words with almost two years ago.
The story keeps getting better, though; just a few weeks ago, I learned that this girl is leaving Fordham and transferring yet again, but this time to a public school back home. For her sake, I hope she learned her lesson of not being so quick to speak negatively about somebody or something, because, when words come back to bite you, they don't bite gently.
