The pain would subside except the distance of time just adds more context - that childhood is a non-repeatable life experience. These people, who others just saw as "funny" or perhaps driven by troubles at home, stole this irreplaceable thing from us.

I was in middle school when a girl in my class started spreading rumors about me and my female friends. She said that she caught my friends and I engaged in sex. I was so humiliated by the nature of the rumor, and at this time I was struggling deeply with my bisexuality. Everywhere I went, classmates snickered at me from behind my back. It got so bad that my friends and I went to the principal and the girl was suspended from school for a week. When she came back she made up a story where her dad held her hand over a hot stove burner as punishment.

I feel that the girl was so insecure about herself that she had to make outlandish stories to detriment others to make herself feel better. Sad really.