Megan Hall - Dear Bully

Only when I got to my gift, I wasn’t amused at all. I also wasn’t surprised.

The first time I remember being bullied, I was in kindergarten. This rotten little boy named Greg pulled my hair as I raced down the slide on the playground. Three years later, Greg would put a tack on my chair. It stung a little when the metal pierced my skin, but what stung worse was when everyone laughed and pointed and when they each would take turns on a daily basis trying to trick me once again into sitting on a tack. I’m proud to say they never got me again. Not after almost twenty tries. But what they did do was send me a very clear message: “You are not wanted here. You are not one of us. You are different, and therefore must be punished.”

And I was different. I dressed weird. I read books all the time. I wrote stories about faraway places. And I came from a family with a notorious history in that small town. My family had suffered the ill fate of losing five homes to house fires over a period of seven years. Everyone knew my name. I was the freak with the fires. I didn’t belong. That message was crystal clear.

It was a message that would be repeated throughout my entire grade-school experience, when I would do my best to stay silent in class or on the bus. I’d hide out in the library when I could. But nothing I did prevented the name-calling, the hair pulling, the creative yet horrifying prank of convincing me that a boy liked me. When I finally agreed to go out with him, everyone laughed. The only funny part of that story is that his name was also Greg. Apparently, I’m doomed to be tormented by the Gregs of the world.

When I entered high school, things lightened up for a short period. Maybe it was because my bullies were but small fish in a much bigger pond with much bigger fish. Maybe it was something else. I’ll never know. But that message needed to be driven home by the end of my freshman year, so it came in the form of a scribbled insult on my notebook in US History. Lesbo , it read. Because apparently, a certain popular boy by the name of Jesse (you thought I was going to say Greg, right?) had decided that because I had actually become close friends with a girl, we must be lesbians. I wasn’t at all offended by being called a lesbian, but the notion that I was being deemed a lesbian by a homophobic idiot who couldn’t even spell the word floored me. I told the teacher, who’s now the principal there, and he chuckled, and I was horrified by his acceptance of such blatant hatred. The class laughed. I spoke with the school’s counselor about it and he laughed it off, too, and told me that things like this build character.

He was wrong.

I had thoughts of suicide all through high school.

I imagined removing myself from the pain and from the horrible people around me. It sounded peaceful. It sounded like a plan. After all, no one cared about me. No one would even notice that I was gone, right? But then I realized that, in the end, they would win. And I would be the one helping them win. They’d go to my funeral and say things like “She was such a nice girl” and “I wish we had gotten to know each other better.” They’d shed tears over their fear of their own mortality and swear that they were tears for me. And a month later, no one would remember my name. Suicide was not the answer, and for many, many years, I wouldn’t know what the answer was. I found it, eventually, in surrounding myself with a family and friends who love and appreciate me, in the therapeutic effect of writing, and in the success of my career. I realized that I am so much more than those insecure bullies ever deemed me to be. I’m special, and weird, and wonderful, all rolled into one. And I always have been. I think on some level, they knew that, and it frightened them. Maybe because deep down, they knew that they weren’t.

Granted, not every thought of suicide was because of the Gregs or Jesse or any of the rest of the kids who picked on me. Some of it was because of stuff I was dealing with at home. Mostly, the house fires.

One would think that one’s classmates would feel a smidge of empathy over something so tragic happening to a girl once, let alone five times. But no. Many of the daily comments were about that as well. And when I say daily, I mean daily. My average daily routine was this:

Get on the bus and see who’s in the back—if the usual bullies hitched a ride to school, I could sit back there. Otherwise, it was up by the bus driver, so I could pretend not to hear their taunts.

Hurry to my locker, ignoring more insults flung my way. After grabbing the books I needed, get said books knocked from my hands onto the floor. Scramble to pick them up (repeat this a couple of times every day) and get to class.

When in class and insults would be flying (except for Ms. Roney’s and Ms. Carnes’s classes—they didn’t put up with that nonsense), do my best to ignore them and count the hours until I could go home.

On lucky, happy days, hide out in the library during study hour.

Ride the bus home, get tripped on my way up the aisle.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

So there I was, sitting in senior English, looking over the newspaper filled with class gifts. I was trying not to read my gift over again, because I knew if I did, I’d cry. And you can’t let the bullies see you cry. But eventually, my utter, pained disbelief got the best of me, and my eyes swept over the words once again.

“To Heather Truax—we leave a fireproof house.”

My soul ached. It aches even now as I write those words. How could someone think that was funny? How could someone think that was an okay thing to joke about? It’s not. It wasn’t then and it’s not now.

But what is funny is that I’m certain many of their children are reading my books, wishing that they could be weird and different, just like me. What is funny is that I’m certain I’m one of the most successful people in my graduating class and that I’ve based an entire series on what it feels like not to belong.

Bullying is a horrible thing. It sticks with you forever. It poisons you. But only if you let it. See, there’s a secret that no one ever tells you when they’re filling your head that this “will build character” or just completely go away when you’re an adult. You have the power to decide what hurts you and what doesn’t, what sticks with you, and what you use as fuel to pull yourself out of the muck. You can make the needed change in your life and give yourself happiness and joy, despite what the bullies have tried to instill in you. You can succeed at anything, at everything. But you can’t let them see you cry. Instead, when they want to see those tears, when they’re doing everything possible to break you down, I want you to smile and remember that they’re just picking on you because they wish they were just like you, but they don’t have the guts.

Remember that, minion, because everyone deserves a happy ending.

Except, maybe, for Greg.

The Funny Guy

by R.L. Stine

In elementary school, I was a funny guy.

I loved to interrupt the teacher, crack a joke, and make everyone laugh. I spent most of my time trying to make my friends laugh. I watched comedians on TV and memorized what they said. I thought I was a comedian, too.

I loved jokes that were a little insulting:

“Is that your face, or did you forget to take out the garbage?”

“Why don’t you turn your teeth around and bite yourself?”

“Ten? Is that your age or your IQ?”

Some kids laughed at my jokes. Some kids just thought I was weird.

My parents were always telling me to “be serious.” But that didn’t stop me from hanging carrots from my nose at the dinner table and crying, “Look! I’m a walrus!”

There were three guys in my fourth-grade class who didn’t think I was funny at all. They gave me a lot of trouble. It was like a war between us.