Megan Hall - Dear Bully

More videos race through my head.

TAKE FOUR:

I’m a student teacher, and in the class to which I’m assigned there’s a girl who is obviously a lesbian and who I’m sure has been bullied. One day I hear that she’s been raped in the girls’ bathroom with a Coke bottle by some of her classmates.

Studies have shown that more than 33 percent of gay, lesbian, and transgender kids are harassed physically in school because of their sexual orientation, and more than 25 percent are harassed because of their gender expression. A study done recently at Nationwide Children’s Hospital found that gay, lesbian, and bisexual teens are bullied two to three times more than straight ones.

TAKE FIVE:

I can see this video clearly, because the boy it’s about is someone my partner and I helped bring up. Let’s call him Kevin. Kevin’s slight of build, has a pleasant, friendly face and a neat sense of humor, and his light brown hair tends to drape over his forehead. He’s the closest thing to a son I’ve ever had.

Now picture a sprawling one-story high school building with a flat roof. Put Kevin on top of it with other boys around him—and watch as the other boys hang him by his heels from the roof.

Thank God he neither fell nor later, like Phoebe Prince, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, and many others, committed suicide.

But years later, after Columbine, Kevin told me and my partner that had it not been for music, basketball, and people like us to talk with, he might well have taken a gun to school and used it, like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine High.

In 2002, research done by the Secret Service and the US Department of Education found that 75 percent of the school shooters they studied were victims of bullying.

There are thousands of bullying incidents every day.

Bullies and bystanders are caught in a cruel vortex of aggression and fear.

Every single bullying victim hurts.

Some kill themselves.

Those who survive bear hidden scars forever.

Finding Light in the Darkness

by Lisa Schroeder

In the darkness of the night,

I shiver under the covers,

unable to free myself

from the bitter cold

hidden in the disgust you shove at me.

In the darkness of the hallway,

I spill invisible blood,

unable to protect myself

from the sharp sting

of the insults you throw at me.

In the darkness of the streets,

I cower as you come at me,

unable to defend myself

from the very real terror

behind the threats you kick at me.

In the darkness

I cry.

In the darkness

I wish.

In the darkness

I pray.

In the light of my family room,

I tell her of the coldness,

able to see

it’s not me

who is weak.

In the light of an office,

I tell him of the pain,

able to see

it’s not me

who is ignorant.

In the light of a new day,

we stand side by side

and we tell the world

we must not tolerate hatred,

able to see

it is us

who will bring change.

Write It

The Sandwich Fight

by Steven E. Wedel

The noise of the lunchroom was loud, rising and falling as the lower grades of Coolidge Elementary talked and ate, ignoring the illuminated red of the traffic light that indicated it was quiet time. Being a picky eater, I’d opted to bring my lunch. I took my sandwich—thin sheets of beef lunch meat with mustard on white bread—from my Charlie Brown lunch box and brought it toward my mouth.

“Give me a bite.” The voice belonged to Kevin. Something inside me squirmed, looking for a deeper place to hide.

A few days earlier, Kevin had demanded one of my mom’s homemade chocolate chip cookies. I refused. He stole one. When I complained to my mom, her response was that I should have shared my cookies. Now, I’m not opposed to sharing. Never have been. But it goes all over me when somebody demands I give up something that is mine. Kevin had stolen my cookie, and now he was sitting there in his yellow button-down shirt, his own lunch in front of him, insisting I give him a bite of my sandwich.

There was more to it, of course. This was second grade, 1972, and only the first year for Enid, Oklahoma, schools to have a hot lunch program. I tried a hot lunch the second day of school and hated it, so I took my lunch every day from then on. Looking back, I suppose it was fitting I carried a Charlie Brown lunch box, considering how much ol’ Chuck and I had in common. Something inside made us easy targets for harassment. Charlie Brown had his Lucy, and I had Kevin.

Earlier in the year, he’d stolen my eraser. Our teacher, Mrs. Patton, was leading a group of kids in reading while I was whispering to Kevin to give back my eraser. The girl next to me was trying to help resolve the issue. Next thing I knew, Mrs. Patton was swatting Kevin, then the girl, and then had me by the ear and was dragging me out of my desk and lighting up my butt with her wooden paddle. Hey, it was the early seventies and that stuff was still allowed.

Classroom, playground, he was always there, always picking on me about something. But nowhere was it worse than the lunchroom.

I lifted the thin sandwich toward my mouth for a second bite, and he grabbed my wrist. We struggled, him pulling my hand and food toward his open mouth. How long until a teacher noticed? Would I get in trouble for this, too? Another swat?

He got his bite. No way I was eating that after his mouth had touched it. I dropped it back into my lunch box and ate whatever else Mom had packed. But it wasn’t over. He loved the idea that I wouldn’t eat the sandwich now and amped up the harassment until, finally, I agreed to settle the matter with him on the playground after school.

The rest of the day was horrible. I was a bundle of nerves. We’d get caught. That was certain. I’d get in trouble at school. They’d call home. Mom would be mad. Dad would be mad. I’d probably get spanked and grounded and Dad—my Pentecostal father—would give me a lecture about turning the other cheek while my mom would settle the issue by making an extra sandwich or cutting mine in half so I could share it.

There were ways out, of course. I could tell on Kevin. However, Mrs. Patton didn’t approve of that. In fact, she usually pinned a long strip of paper to the butt of anyone who told on classmates; she encouraged and led the way in calling people tattletales. No joke. This is the same teacher who told the class’s only black student that he’d melt into a puddle of chocolate if he didn’t stop sweating in class. Remember, early seventies.

I could try to leave through a different door, but Kevin would most likely just follow me. I could pretend to be sick and go home early, but Mom would know I wasn’t sick and I’d get in trouble for that and probably have to explain why I really went home.

Not fighting was an option . . . but was it a good one? What was in store for me if I didn’t go through with the fight? There would be more bullies in later grades. Oh, and junior high. Is there a worse time in anybody’s life? Puberty lay in wait for me, and it had nasty plans. My face would become a constant mass of red, oozing acne. Blackheads, whiteheads, the works. I’d hit a growth spurt in which I seemed to grow taller by a few inches every month or so, making my jeans always too short and my shirts too tight.

Not standing up now would keep me from fighting back if some punk who used to be my friend dragged me out of the boys’ restroom while I was changing out of my band uniform, casting me to the hallway floor in just a shirt, socks, and my tighty-whities, right in front of some preppy girls. Avoiding Kevin now would mean I’d do nothing when clubbed over the head at my locker or when my face was slammed against another guy’s crotch.