Bullies in Schools

Granted that People Magazine has its interest in sleaze, it also has its interest in public issues and affairs (outside of the famous people and their affairs) and one subject that has been getting more and more notice is school bullying.

When I lived in Wallington, NJ, I didn't love school, but it was okay. It was an onerous task with boring teachers and some wretched kids but it was just there. I prayed for snow days but in those ancient days (I sound the grandparents of any age, at 42) we had to go to school even when there were measurable inches of snow. But as much as I wasn't crazy about it, I usually had a couple of friends and did poorly in subjects I wasn't interested in and flew through the few that I was.

Teachers loved to say I wasn't attentive and this and that, but I have discovered that adults lie as much as children and when put to the wall, even more.

When we moved from Wallington to Wayne in 1981, I discovered what every kid dreaded - moving to a new town, new school, and having to refit into a different society. In this I would get very low marks.

The eighth grade is a time of torture, not just from your body and growing pains but from trying out a new mental fit with the body and growing pains. And in the midst of this, we moved from a poor - lower income class to a higher-than-middle to high income class.

Some of differences were apparent immediately. Kids in Wallington smoked pot; kids in Wayne did cocaine. Kids in Wallington had favourite outfits; some (not many but undeniably notable) kids in Wayne never wore the same outfit twice. Other differences became more apparent as the school year began - very early on - to wear thin.

Now, it's so easy to pass off your kids' complaints about school as trying to get out of it. I did not lie about it - I wanted to get out of it at every possible moment. I was very quickly pointed out as new and subsequently foreign and unwelcome at every moment in the new eighth grade class. Two teachers knew it and recognised it for what it was - bullying - but the rest and especially the school administration tried to sweep it under the rug and put the blame on me for it. I hated those people for many years and the kids that managed to artfully to do the bullying.

I got lucky - while I read about kids killing themselves because of it, I was never suicidal and never entertained the idea of offing myself. I was miserable and unhappy, but not to that point. And as much as I'd like to say it was my own internal fortitude and happiness... that would be wrong, too.

No, I lucked out - I have incredibly supportive parents; I did have the one or two teachers who understood; and I escaped Wayne and its horrors every summer and Christmas and Easter break. My parents also never pushed me to be anyone other than me. They also did not push the college thing. They knew I hated school and it would be unlikely that I would even entertain the idea of college - not knowing that college is not the insular experience that middle and high school was. I didn't and there was no explaining to me the difference. The fact was the moment I was out of high school, no matter what my grades were, I was not going to darken the doorstep of another learning institution ever again.

The first day in the Wayne George Washington Middle School I met Peter [some Polish last name] kid who was quite fat and decided that I was slime. I also met Lori Zeim [this is the lowest common denominator] who was a pudgy bully from way back who loved tripping me and twirling my locker combination at every moment to make me late to every class I had. She's probably still a loser and maybe she has kids (scary thought) and I can only hope that as a huge bullier, she has raised them to be human and humane.

I also had to take the bus to the school - the first and last year I had to do that, which was a relief. I hated to walking to school, but I hated the bus a lot more. Despite the fact that an adult drove the bus, the opportunities for abuse and torture of fellow students was rampant in the wait and the bus. (Unfortunately that horrible school was too far for me to walk to and from it.)

I can't remember Tara's last name any longer but if it comes to me I'll throw it in. Another typical fat kid, she was abusive clearly to take the onus off of herself for being enormously overweight. I wouldn't consider bullying others into being for or against you a winning argument but she seemed to be content with it. There were others at the school stop that I rarely saw in the school but still had the misfortune to see coming and going from the school.

I never set foot on the playground at the school. I read books or worked on different things after lunch and willingly sat where the kids in trouble who were barred from the play sat. Teachers sometimes tried to get me out there but most on some level understood it and stopped. The other thing I tried to get out of all the time was gym class.

The stupidest and least revered of forced teaching, gym class was the openly feared class of all those bullied. We know it was open season on us for the entire 42 minutes of class. When it came to the weird electives like archery I was interested and loved it, when it came to team sports (and I would imagine those who know me at all are thinking, "Ah, this is insightful!") I wanted nothing to do with it. Dodge ball is as bad for the bullied as it is for the actual target. So were all the other sports and after so many purposely planted bruised knees and stomped on feet, I wanted nothing to do with that.

Wayne's George Washington school met with my parents a multitude of times regarding this and never wanted to acknowledge or deal with this. It was much easier to blame me for being a loner or not integrating well or blame my grades, then deal with the ugly truth. So when I see schools getting the poor press of the bullied, I don't feel the slightest sympathy for them. I never will. However, I do feel more for the bullied students - not only do they have the same abusive kids that I had, but now there is the Internet and My Space and Facebook where you can publicly smear others.

I hope all the school administrators who still can't handle this are terminated and replaced with the properly caring people but I guess the big question is how many more teenagers will die before it happens?