It was, of course, a popular mean girl who made my life miserable in middle school.

She made a point to ask me, in front of whatever audience she could rally around her, if I had attended the big party over the weekend. (I never had.) If I had found a boyfriend. (Nope.) If I even had a clue about the fantastic life that she and her friends led. (Not really.)

While her needling seemed like the end of the world when I was 11 and 12, it taught me to have a great deal of compassion for the marginalized as I grew up. I've wondered what happened to my young tormentor as the years passed. A new study out of the University of Virginia suggests she should have been nicer.

Published last month in the journal Child Development, it followed the "cool kids" from middle school for a decade. It's true what they say about peaking too young: The socially precocious teens in middle school fell lower on the social hierarchy by high school. And in their early 20s, they had more problems with drugs and alcohol, more trouble with the law and were less competent in their friendships.

What's surprising is that the middle school "fast-track," as measured in this study, seems tame compared to the images put forth in current pop culture. One of the markers identified middle schoolers who reported becoming seriously romantically involved at this age, as in making out with a boyfriend or girlfriend, but not going further than that.

"Some people might see that as normative at age 13, but that's actually very precocious," said Megan Schad, a co-author on the paper. The other measures looked at whether the teens had gotten in trouble for such things as skipping school, shoplifting, sneaking into movies or participating in minor vandalism. Lastly, those who cared a lot about appearances -- surrounding themselves with just the pretty ones -- and who expressed an extreme desire to be popular scored high on the study's scale. All of these behaviors were aggregated into one measure to gauge later outcomes.

The cool kids from the Virginia study, when compared with their peers at age 23, had a 45 percent greater rate of troubles with alcohol and marijuana use and a 22 percent greater rate of adult criminal behavior.

When children do things at 13 that would seem more age-appropriate for 16 and 17, that's a red flag for future problems that parents ought to take seriously, Schad said.

This type of risk-taking and look-at-me behavior may lead to a sort of "pseudomaturity:" an extreme desire to appear older and impress others without actually learning how to connect with them, she explained. It makes sense that teens who are preoccupied with appearances, rather than being a good friend, are likely to have trouble with friendships later in life.

"The majority, or the 'normal kids' from middle school, have outcomes in the long run that are healthier," she said. "If you got ignored during middle school, it's probably not a bad thing."

Fortunately, I was spared crushing isolation during those difficult years because I grew up with cousins who were my best friends. Plus, my parents enrolled me in weekend Islamic school, where a tight group of friends understood the cultural and religious restrictions my immigrant parents placed on my nonexistent social life. Those peers endured the same.

The study should serve as a warning to those who want their middle-schoolers to be popular. It may make those dark and angsty years easier to bear, but at what cost down the line?

As my own daughter ventures into the middle school abyss this year, I've reminded her: The most interesting people you meet as adults are typically survivors of a tortured middle-school experience.

Phil Davies, 88, shuffled a few steps behind his new bride down the long hallway, leaning his right side on a metal cane to ease pressure off his bad ankle.

That's what he gets for robbing the cradle.

Gloria, 83, walked into his apartment and started looking through a few papers.

"I'm still waiting for the name change documents," she said and threw her hands up. "It's maddening." She still has most of her things in her own unit while the couple waits for a larger one to become available. She settled into the couch and glanced at the sparkly 1-carat rock on her finger, a gold band with smaller diamonds on either side.

"Even if the marriage doesn't last, I'm keeping the diamond," she said, laughing. Phil, 88, finally sits next to her. The newlyweds kept touching each other -- a pat on the knee, a caress on the hands.

They had moved into the Breeze Park retirement community in St. Charles, Missouri within a few months of each other in 2011. He had been widowed a few years prior, after 58 years of marriage. She had had a longtime companion; they had never married nor lived together, and he had passed away more than 20 years earlier.

In Gloria's first week at the center, the hostess in the dining room seated her at a table with Phil and two other women. Phil, a retired pilot, struck up an easy conversation with her, since she had also traveled considerably in her former career. Then Phil discovered that he and another woman at the table had a mutual friend, and Gloria remembers thinking, "Hmm ... he's talking more to her than me."

Phil interrupted her: "But I only had eyes for you."

Living in a retirement community is a lot like living in a small town or college dorm. The two wanted to meet again, but kept missing each other. Phil spotted her walking in once while he was in his car headed to dinner. He turned around and tried to catch up with her.

"She must have been running," he said, because he lost track of her by the time he made it in. They finally made a plan to meet at the hostess station for dinner, and once they figured out that system, they rarely missed one another. They were the talk of the community.

One night, he asked if he could walk her back to her apartment.

"I'm a big girl. I can walk myself home," she said. (She was worried about the distance from her place to his, given his fused ankle from a plane crash years ago.) After several months, right before Easter weekend, Phil asked if she would like to go out to dinner with him. Neither of them had been on a date in decades.

She wore black slacks and a turtleneck with a turquoise vest. He wore a jacket and tie. When she saw him, she thought: "Wow. He's handsome."

Phil took the long, scenic drive back from the winery. He thinks he got as far as a handshake that evening. Undeterred, he asked her out again. They talked about their families, their work -- everything, really.

"Mr. Davies, I think I'm becoming more than a little fond of you," she said one day.

"I think it's further along than that for me," he replied. Still, she was reluctant to make their relationship more serious. She had never been married.

As parents, we hope our children find lasting love and a companion to grow old with, but timing has a mind of its own.

An only child, Gloria's parents had never pressured her to marry simply for the sake of marriage. She had worked at Southwestern Bell for 37 years, took an early retirement and worked as a tour guide for a travel agency for another 19 years.

Phil understood and didn't want to rush Gloria. But last December, he said he would like to buy her a ring.

"We don't have to get married right now," he said. "The time will come, but I just want to stake my claim."

She agreed. Soon after they picked out the ring, the younger employees in the cafeteria and fitness areas wanted to hear about wedding plans. A few took Gloria shopping for a wedding dress. She insisted on sleeves. She wanted to keep it as simple as possible, but the wedding "just grew like Topsy," she said.

A few people asked them why they bothered to get married at their age.

"If God gives us 10 years, 5 years, 2 years, or another hour together, it's a gift," Gloria said.

Phil asked his son, Dan, to be his best man; Dan, thrilled to see his father so happy again, said he was honored. The engaged couple told the pastor to keep the ceremony short and sweet because they weren't sure how long they could stand at the altar.

They asked a minister and his wife to sing their song at the ceremony. When the music started, Phil stared at his bride and started softly singing to her. She sang the words back to him.

"Let me call you 'Sweetheart,' I'm in love with you."

"Let me hear you whisper that you love me too."

"Keep the love-light glowing in your eyes so true."

"Let me call you 'Sweetheart,' I'm in love with you."

There weren't many dry eyes in the packed chapel at Breeze Park that day.

If Cristiano Ronaldo rips off his jersey during the World Cup to reveal the chiseled body underneath, could it inspire worldwide ab rage?

Women have had fashion magazines to make them feel badly about themselves for decades. Now, lots of men have joined the party.

Research has found that when men were shown images of other lean, young and muscular men, they became angrier and more depressed.

"That's exactly correct," said David LaPorte, director of clinical psychology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. "Studies in which they show a bunch of undergraduate males pictures of muscular guys, guess what? Right after that, they feel kind of crappy about themselves."

Men, long considered more comfortable in their own skin, so to speak, aren't immune to the evolving cultural standards of hotness.

The gap between men's and women's body image is closing. Men have become more critical of themselves as the male body ideal has become more muscular, cut and lean.

"Over the last decade, there (has been) a huge increase of men reporting they are dissatisfied with how they look," said Heather Hausenblas, a Florida-based psychologist who has studied body image, eating and exercise behaviors.

When a cultural standard, such a perceived body ideal, changes within 15 to 20 years, that's a rather rapid pace for social change. LaPorte remembers when the shift began in marketing, with female images becoming ever skinnier. A few decades later, the male image became more of a "testosterone-fueled monstrosity."

The men most susceptible to this sort of ab envy tend to be younger (teens to 30s), come from a higher socioeconomic status and are more likely to be white than an ethnic minority, according to Hausenblas.

I asked her to consider the notion of male body image in the context of World Cup soccer athletes. Here we have a regular parade of the most fit male athletes in the world. Isn't that bound to create some ripples in the male psyche?

"I've got a nice picture of David Beckham in my mind right now," Hausenblas started.

"You're looking at one percent of the population," she continued. Most people are aware of the long hours of training, the science and extreme discipline of diet required to maintain such a form. "Most us are quite aware of what the ideal physique looks like," she said; it's only those who internalize it as their own standard who may struggle with body image issues.

Still, many men seem blissfully unworried about how they stack up to the body elites. (There's ample evidence of this in the swimwear choices on beaches across the country this summer.) Why don't more women share their carefree attitude?

"Part of the disparity is that, to this day, females continue to be evaluated on their appearance much more than males are," LaPorte said. Men are afforded other measures of self-worth, such as career success. Women are held to the impossible standard of an airbrushed magazine cover.

Among men and women who report dissatisfaction with their bodies, it's a small subset who succumb to extreme problematic behaviors, such as developing an eating disorder or using steroids.

Whatever body dissatisfaction men may experience, it likely will never affect them on the same scale that it does women, LaPorte said. Partly, it's a matter of biology: It's easier for a man of any size to lift some weights and bulk up, but for a woman whose body is naturally a size 8 or 12, slimming down to a size 2 or 4 will require some pathology in behavior, he explained.

Hausenblas says people who begin exercising to change their physique are less likely to stick with it as opposed to those who exercise to become more healthy.

Obviously, playing soccer is better for you than watching the World Cup. Unless, of course, your goals are measured in eye candy.