Bullied then, successful now.
Clay Burell has examined a personally painful time in his teenage years, and has found there is an audience for the stories that we all have hidden. He has asked for us to create a thoughtful meme of our tales. We have them, many of us, in our past. They are there still like a scar from falling off your bike when you were ten. You may not see the scar that was left from this experience-but you may understand me better for the telling.
I was the ’smart one’ in my family. School came very easy to me and I excelled in all subject areas. I loved to read. I consumed books in a day. The libraries both in my elementary school and the public one in town were visited weekly. My library card’s corners were worn soft from constant use and handling. I was not just a bookworm. I played softball and was a great fielder. I credit my brother for the backyard catch sessions in which he would burn them in to me to see what I could handle. I got good at taking a hard throw and my accuracy to return the ball to him in a snap landed me at shortstop.
My community on Long Island was not very diverse in either its ethnic or religious composition. The town which was on the shore of the Great South Bay had its socioeconomic dividing line-the Long Island Railroad tracks. My side of town was very middle class, mostly Italian-Americans. I wasn’t.
Elementary school was a very nurturing place. I lived a block from my school. We all walked there in the morning and ran home in the afternoon. I remember playing in the schoolyard all summer. I attended Brownies and then Girl Scouts there as well. We would have snowball fights on the piles of snow the plows pushed to the edge of the parking lot. This building was full of people I knew and I felt safe there. My mom was president of the PTA. By the time I was in 6th grade, my final year there- all that changed.
L. was a friend of mine. Her mother had become a Jehovah’s Witness, and so her family converted from Catholicism to follow the doctrines of her new religion. That made her ‘weird’ to the other kids. In our classroom in 6th grade, our male teacher decided to let the cliquey girls decorate a bulletin board. They choose to put pictures from TigerBeat magazine of teenybopper idols on the bulletin board-Leif Garrett, Shaun Cassidy, whoever the teen heartthrob of the moment was. I was somewhat put off by this-since I never read any of that stuff to begin with- and I was appalled in was now in my classroom but I just steered clear of the nonsense. L. was drawn to the bulletin board, or maybe the chance to feel ‘in’ the group. She tried to staple something up and I heard them be really cruel to her. She said nothing.
I said “Why don’t you leave her alone?”
It was at that moment the universe shifted and the focus turned on me. I stood up to them and they were going to make sure I felt their wrath. It started with the whispering and then the direct looks at me. It spread-the original group of five spread the message to the rest of the girls in the class not to talk to me. Friends of mine since kindergarten shunned me.
Stage one-Isolation was complete. Stage two-social ridicule began next.
Having a male teacher who was oblivious did not help my situation. The girls mocked me and laughed at me openly in class and no one stopped them. Lunch was bad, gym class was bad, I was never away from THEM. It spilled over to violence only once on the playground-they goaded some other girls to push me around on the playground. I was shoved to the ground and I stayed down knowing if I got up, they would do it again or punch me. There were no adults there to stop it. I never went out for recess again. EVER. I talked to the school librarian and she understood. She allowed me to come and help in the library as the first grade classes came to her, instead of going outside to 6th grade recess HELL.
I began crying all the time at home. I became physically ill from the stress. I tried to stay home from school sick. My mother knew that there was something really wrong in my class- she made phone calls to both the teacher and the principal but really nothing changed. I was the favorite target of abuse. It was a lonely awful place.
The depth of their meanness was proven when I received a call from my softball coach.
She had just gotten off the phone with someone claiming to be ‘me’. I had a sprained finger from jamming it. Someone had called her pretending to be me. I had just come from the doctor, and she should take me off the roster- I wouldn’t be able to be on the team any more. She was suspicious and asked to speak to my mother. When the phone was handed to another obvious non-adult-she knew it was a deception. NO KIDDING. They were trying to ruin everything I did, including softball. At the next practice, the coach made the entire team run bases. The nasty little ringleader had the nerve to run up alongside me and still threaten me with a glare saying I better not tell anyone it was her.
Softball season was Spring. School finally ended in June. Summer came but no one has ever feared Junior High as much as I did. After what I had just lived through, my level of anxiety was ratcheted up to the zillionth degree. Thankfully Junior High was EXACTLY what I needed. I was in classes with the other kids that liked to read-the smart kids! Those TigerBeat buying, gum snapping girlgang members weren’t even in my gym class.
I still recall the real physical response I would have if I happened by one of them on the staircase. Honestly, I was free of them and the daily torment that they inflicted on me. I came back strong- and school was once again an exciting experience filled with new things to try.
I heard years later the ringleader had gone away to school for college and had not even lasted one semester. She had complained to her mother about not having friends….I laughed.
I still take on bullies. I still stand up for others when I feel they have been wronged. Ask around-my twitter pals will tell you. I am steadfast as a friend. I don’t let others feel isolated or picked on. I patrol my classroom, my staff lounge and my online network. If I can help others face their tormentors and stand tall. I am there.
