My daughter Kate loves horses, her violin and, above all else, her friends. She also happens to have been born with dwarfism, a condition that makes her smaller than other kids. She will always be smaller. Kate’s fine with that. She doesn’t give it much thought, really. But I’ve become increasingly full of dread that her generation of mean girls will eventually stop accepting her for who she is, seize upon her obvious difference and just destroy her.

Kate goes to a school in St. Paul that teaches grades 1 through 8 (she’s a second grader), and when I was there for a parent-teacher conference a few months ago, I noticed the older girls traveling in packs, whispering, laughing with mockery at whichever poor victim they were savaging at the time. I didn’t know these girls, but I didn’t like them.

Next afternoon, I was riding the No. 63 bus home from work. At the stop after mine, five pretty, well-dressed teenage girls got on and sat right behind me. I wished I hadn’t forgotten my headphones that day because I didn’t want to hear the horrible things these girls were inevitably about to say. They talked nonstop.

“Hey, is it O.K. if Rachel comes with us on Friday?”

“O.K. But I don’t think I know her. Do I?”

“She’s my friend from that summer program. She’s really funny, I think you’d like her.”