Dispatches from Home – Bullies. (Originally published April 22, 2012)

Here’s the question: Are you a bully? Or were you the victim of one? I was the latter. Reading about the poor teenager whose life has been irrevocably changed due to a spinal injury, the result of a bully’s fist punch to the boy’s abdomen, conjured memories of my High School days in the 1960s. Thankfully, my “injuries” were not physical, only mental.

In one of my annuals, there’s a snap of a trio of girls, aglow with Pepsodent smiles, standing in front of a water fountain at the base of a Y-shaped staircase. For me, the stairs were not “the stairway to Heaven.” I had to climb that staircase every day, passing the giggling girls.

When I started my climb, their jeers echoed in the hallway: “Whoooo! Look who’s here, sissy boy. Hey sissy boy, where’d you get that trench coat? Did your mama buy you that briefcase?” Their taunts brought the jeers of others, and if I could have, I would have crawled between the paint on the walls and the concrete blocks to which it was attached. This assault was daily, and daily I climbed the stairs, desperately looking for an escape. I never found one.

If the girls were vicious, the boys were just downright mean! One, in particular, seemed to take sadistic pleasure in making my life a living hell. I can see him now, tall with a mop of coal-black hair, sauntering down the long school hallway—the cock of the walk, as it were. He was the campus football hero, the idol of his coach’s eye, and eyed by all the giggling girls at school. He was, in a word—perfect. Perfect, that is, until I came into his sights. And Oh! My grashus! The nasty, lewd things that “perfect” boy said to me. I didn’t even know what some of them meant. Oftentimes, he would shove up against my locker, threatening bodily harm.

Looking back now, I wonder if he bullied me because I was small in stature. Perhaps it gave him a sense of empowerment due to his low self-esteem. Maybe he was bullied at home, and his father and brothers were “real men,” causing conflict and aggression in the home. Perhaps he had elevated levels of anxiety, depression, or anger. One other bit of info about this perfect boy: he was a member in good standing in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes?    

But time heals most wounds. Fast forward to the early 1990s.

After a smashing, sold-out run of “The Christmas Carol” at a local theater, I was standing in the lobby receiving accolades about the show and my portrayal as Scrooge. And low-and-behold, who should appear in the receiving line but Miss Pepsodent Smile of Water Fountain fame! She and her grandson had come to see the show. When she approached me, it was like Old Home Week. She hugged me and told her grandson we had been friends in High School. He was a cute kid, about 12 years old, and full of questions about my makeup, costume, etc. I politely smiled and answered all his questions, the entire time thinking, “Little One, I hope you never have to experience the living hell I did, all of it brought on by your dear old grandmother.” 

Mr. Perfect made a comeback, too. One day, while dining at Gulfport’s Half Shell Oyster House, I saw him across the dining room, gorging himself on gumbo and raw oysters. I could not help but chuckle and think, “Mercy me! How the mighty have fallen.” Gone was the mop of coal-black hair, replaced by a bald pate of blotchy pink skin. Gone was the muscular physique, replaced with one resembling a rotund wooden barrel.

 As I was leaving, our eyes met. For a second, he acted as if he didn’t remember me, but then he smiled a toothy, yellow grin and said, “Well, look who it is…the little pansy boy.” Little did he know that the “little pansy boy” had matured over the years and no longer feared Mr. Perfect. With a sweet smile, I looked at him and said, “You know, in an ever-changing world, it’s a shame some things never change…once a jerk, always a jerk. I’ve moved onward, and you should, too! Have a great day.” I left Mr. Perfect with a spot of gumbo on his tie and a look of bewilderment on his face.

Now, said all that to ask this. Were you a bully? If so, shame, shame, shame on you. And if you were, have you reared your sons and daughters to be the same, or perhaps your grandchildren? If so, shame, shame, shame on you! I look back on those hellish days at school and can say without reservation that I would not have survived them had not been for my loving parents—Mom, the school teacher, Dad, the Marine—and Gulfport’s dear ol’ First Baptist Church.

Those two places – home and church – were my anchors in the vicious, turbulent waters of my youth. Had it not been for those anchors tethering me to places where I found true love and acceptance, I shudder to think where I might have ended up or what I might have become. Bullying has erupted on our school campuses, its bitter pus oozing into festering sores. It has brought untold misery to millions of young people and death to some.

And now, a teenager in Ramsey, New Jersey, will live the rest of his life in a wheelchair due to being bullied. But how can we fault bullies when, many times, their parents instruct them in the fine “art” of bullying? How do they do that? By never reprimanding their children and telling them, “Bullying is evil and wrong.” By blaming others for their child’s abhorrent behavior. Or by appeasing the child, saying, “Honey, don’t you fret. Mommy and Daddy will smooth everything over.”

Many parents, though, do everything they can to rear their children not to be bullies. They teach them right from wrong, to love, not hate, to empathize, and to “do unto others as you would have them to do you.” Even then, a child can morph into some type of Frankensteinian monster, trying to kill the very people who created it.

So what to do? How to stop the bullying? I have no idea. But I do know if children who are bullied do not stand up for themselves, backed up by their parents, nothing will change. If you even suspect your child or someone else’s child is the victim of a bully, talk to that child. Talk to his/her parents, grandparents, and school officials. I never told my parents or anyone in authority about my days being bullied by Mr. Perfect. Silence may be golden in a library, but when it comes to bullies, silence is a road map to an irrevocable destination: disaster.