The Rich Bitch

“Jackasses bray and thoroughbreds run,” Bill Bogle.

A little family history

My great grandfather Hal Bogle had tuberculosis and left Tennessee for a drier New Mexico and started farming, ranching and raising thoroughbreds. My grandfather Bill Bogle had polio, but that did not hinder his vision. He was an extremely smart man, and continued growing the family business by turning it into three separate ranches and one large farming operation. Bogle Limited was selected as the 1999-2000 American Quarter Horse Association Best Remuda recipient. We have the crash site of the UFO on our ranch, bat caves and we use to have a farm house where 15 POW’s of WWII stayed, but we blew it up this spring. We are pyromaniacs at heart. We manage our business on horseback, and my family and I are extremely hard workers; I credit that to my grandfather and grandmother.

My father and mother have continued the entrepreneur spirit by establishing a forage harvesting business, B&B Choppers, with my cousin Martin Bogle. My aunt is a well-known successful lawyer, my mother is a successful Mary Kay Director, my other aunt is an extremely smart writer, and my uncles are horse whisperers. My cousins, sister and I have continued to carry on the Bogle name in other career fields. We are head strong and extremely driven people. 

Junior High 

In junior high you would think I had an identity crisis rapping Ying Yang twins, wearing bandannas, long shorts and J’s, and having every Selena song on my mp3 so my friends would think I was cool. After school, I would go to piano lessons, listen to 90s country, put on my boots and hoe weeds in our pecan orchards. I had a close group of friends going in to high school, but all that changed, especially when I got good at sports. I wasn’t moved up for high school basketball, because my mother knew how badly the high school girls bullied me, so she told the coach no, but I begged to run varsity track.

That is when it started - varsity track. I got questions like this, did your daddy talk to the coach? I got threats if I beat girls in sprints at practice, so I would wait until the meets to beat them. I would run to the locker room to change before the upperclassmen got there. No one else from my eighth grade class moved up to varsity track, so I was all alone. It got really bad when I beat out a junior for her spot on the 4X100 meter relay and qualified for State. And the questions continued, how much did your daddy pay the coach? Don’t act all innocent, we know you’re just a rich bitch. I became more quiet and a recluse, because I was scared. 

Gotta love high school.

I went to Dexter High School, a public high school in the Pecos Valley. According to my peers,  people who had “last names” were supposed to go to private schools. Needless to say, I stuck out like a sore thumb, but not because of what I wore, my hair or my friends, but because I was a Bogle. I wore sweat pants almost every single day to school, my hair was always in a ponytail, and my gym bag was my purse. I did not want to bring more attention to myself, but also because I like to dress that way anyway. I think I'm down-to-earth. 

High school had already started with the pretense that this blonde hair, blue eyed, jock is a “rich bitch,” and none of them even knew me or wanted to get to know me. It didn’t help that I was boy crazy. I am not going to deny that fact. I also had a new crisis – body image. I have always been muscular and curvy and that is different for a white girl, I guess. So, when three-a-days (yes three-a-days) started for high school volleyball, I pushed myself so hard to look what everyone thought I should look like – skinny and tall. I went from a size six to a size zero-two in three months. One of my teachers ask me if I had a problem, it was that bad. Sadly, that did not help the bullying or quiet the comments. The better I got, the worse it was. The girls would hit me in the head with volleyballs during hitting drills when I wasn’t looking and my coach would laugh. And then immediately after practice ask me to ask my family to sponsor the entire team with free gameday shirts and the upcoming fundraiser.

Thankfully, the guys in my class had my back. I have always been the jock that hangs with the football guys, most of my friends today are men. We had tough days, but without their help it would have been much more difficult. Even though I tried to be a recluse, my friends from the First Presbyterian Church Youth Group always helped especially when I didn't realize how alone I felt and how much I needed them. I'll never forget going to build a house with them in San Leon, and in turn building great friendships, and giving my testimony in front of my peers.

It was basketball season. I was a power forward, so when my coach put me up against the senior girls for post drills I started shaking and became extremely nervous. I can’t explain to you how many bruises I had on my sides and ribs from jabs after the drill or elbows to the ribs when the ball was already dead. Sports are competitive and if anyone understands that it’s me, but there is a huge difference between playing aggressive and straight up trying to injure your competition, when it is your TEAMMATE. The locker room threats continued. What was worse is my junior high friends hated me for being moved up and my varsity team didn’t like me, because I was competition. I did not instigate it, instead I stopped going to lunch, because the girls would call me names like “rich bitch, slut, whore, ugly, etc.” while I was in the lunch line. So, I would go shoot free-throws at lunch, I would not eat lunch the entire basketball season. This continued until my junior year.

My father likes to sit behind the bench during basketball games, and my point guard wouldn’t pass me the ball during our district game. She never passed me the ball. The 14 points I averaged a game were from rebound put backs. “I was a rich bitch who complained to her daddy, so I don’t deserve the ball,” that was why according to her. My father started screaming to the point guard to pass me the ball, along with other parents. So after the game my coach said, “You can tell your father to shut the f**** up. And I don’t give a shit if he is a Bogle,” in front of all my teammates. We had lost the game by 20 points. My father yelling did not loose us the game, but this did not help my case.

Track was better, because I had established myself by qualifying as an eighth grader. I would stay after practice and run 400s to continue to get stronger, and also so I wouldn’t be in the locker room with the other girls. Another reason I would stay after practice was because my parents were going through a hellacious divorce, and home was not home. Surprisingly, the “rich Dexter family” did not have everything perfectly put together with the money my parents were raking in. I guess that determines happiness to people. If you have heard the song Castle Walls that is exactly how it was. While the upperclassmen continued to bully me for being a Bogle and good at sports, I was begging to trade them places.

You know how you typically go through initiation once maybe twice as a freshman….yeah I went through it every year. It didn’t stop until junior year, when I flipped a fellow teammate upside down during volleyball practice. I was sick of it, and I snapped. (True story, many can attest to this.) That was the last comment she made to me. The rich bitch comments stopped, at least from my teammates. It took physically sticking up for myself and blacking out to get my teammates to back off. 

Lastly, I know we shouldn’t hold grudges for trivial things, however, after playing three sports for four full years in high school, you were suppose to be a go-to nomination for the Greatest Demon Award. Your name is put on a plaque in the gym, which would hopefully hang by my record holding 4X100 time already in the gym. I was the only senior to accomplish this, and they gave the award to a cheerleader for the first time ever that year. When I asked why, “Well, you’re a Bogle.” No, I am not kidding, an adult literally said that to my face.

When I look back at high school, I don’t understand why I was bullied into not eating, being quiet, scared, and then hosting pool parties and bringing Mary Kay makeup to my teammates, and fronting the money to sponsor events and shirts for our team? I was tall, ripped, but I was bullied into being so quiet I rarely stood up for myself. Now, I'm very head strong and out spoken, probably due to my experience in high school. I don’t understand why I was ashamed of playing piano competitively, dancing, being an honors student, being a cowgirl, or what my family had. It was disrespectful for me to feel that way, after what my family has accomplished. I didn’t realize how great it is to be proud of myself, and to not be someone I wasn't. All the corny things we are told by our parents, but don't understand until we walk the walk.

When I came to Texas Tech, I did not know who I was, and had no clue what I wanted to be. Then a guy told me I was beautiful, which I had not heard in a long time, and a friend said be proud of where you come from and have confidence. Slowly my confidence grew, sadly it took help. I received several prominent scholarships, both nationally and internationally. I landed an internship without the employer knowing my family, and recently a man came up to me and said I had no idea what your family did, and your history is so cool. Every now and then I find myself not talking about it much, because I don’t want to brag and I don’t want people to think I'm a selfish brat. You hear about people coming from nothing and their success stories. It is not any different. Money has been a problem not a blessing for my family. I went through my parents divorce, an unhealthy relationship, intense bullying, and now I am doing every thing I wished to accomplish. I did that on my own two feet, but because I come from a wealthy family it doesn’t mean much to people.

Back home people still ask me what I had to do to get a job at Ramar Communications. They ask what phone call my father made. When people find out I own a house, they ask me if my daddy foots the bill. People I use to work with would say, “why should you get a raise, when you drive the truck you do. You don’t need help.” No, I am not exaggerating. Grown people carried on the “rich bitch” tradition. “You must have been babied or something to expect anything, you're weak.” “Why are applying for scholarships when your family can pay for your college?” I have heard everything imaginable.

It is sad that people judge you for what you have and don’t have. This is not a sob story, but sometimes it is good to bring light to these situations, particularly bullying. It is also very therapeutic to write about. And instead of me worrying about what you might think of me after this blog post, I am writing it anyway. I am sure the usual words come to mind, "poor pitiful Lauren Bogle, she was bullied and called names, but look what she has - TV jobs, a house, money, like seriously cry me a river.” I don't care what you think of me. What's worst is bullying seems to follow me in this industry, because I am a woman, but I am not going to dive into that. I am not asking for sympathy by any means, I don't need it nor do I want it. I can always be better, and try harder. I am definitely the first person to reevaluate myself, and I'm always trying to better myself. 

The message we read from success stories is so true – adversity made me stronger. When I go to sleep at night, and know that I pay for my house, my truck, my livelihood with my salary and not my families help - that makes me proud. People in Lubbock recognize my name as the sporty, football obsessed reporter, not a farmer/rancher's daughter. I can’t prove to people how hard of a worker I am, how strong my faith is, how good of a person I am, because at the end of the day people will think what they want to think. 

No one can understand my story, until you walk a mile in my shoes. I will never fully be able to understand the story of a basketball player from the Bronx, I can't even imagine. We all have our own story to tell, and we shouldn’t be so quick to judge. And just like my grandfather would say, “Jackasses bray and thoroughbreds run."