Bullying

As you no doubt have done in recent weeks, I have read many accounts in the media on bullying and gay youth suicide.  Upon reflection it might be a good time to recount similar experiences I have had.

I was raised in a very strict Christian household.  Due to parental and religious proscriptions I was not allowed to make "worldly" friends.  I was raised to be intolerant of my neighbors, my teachers and my classmates.  Holidays they celebrated I viewed with disdain, actively giving voice to relevant "Bible truths" concerning each which caused discomfort to those unfortunate enough to have tried to approach me on those subjects.  Under those circumstances it was likely that I come in for teasing in school, and inevitable that this would eventually lead to bullying.

I recall one freezing day in winter that I was waiting for the bus in second grade where, due to my inability to get along with the neighbor children, the older kids forbade me to use the bus shelter.  (And I never was allowed to use the bus shelter again.)  At first it was fun being alone in the snow, to imagine the ice-covered trash bins as forts and the bus as the dragon we eagerly awaited to ride upon.  Soon though my boots were soggy from slush and my mittens were dark with melted water from making snowballs.  The bus came and by unspoken (in my presence, at least) agreement I was forced to stand in the front of the bus because no one would give me a third of a seat.  The nearly deaf old fellow who drove bus #79 never looked back and we drove down the mountain to school.

Later that day I noticed a measure of stand-offishness gather around me and, in my then-current contrary frame of mind, I reveled in the elbow room.  Soon though I heard whispers I was obviously meant to hear of my having "cooties" and my name actually being pronounced "throw-up".  My family name was a thing of inflated pride, being the only valuable thing we owned in life at the mobile home park, and I quickly was angered by this unwarranted attack upon something I felt those children had little room to speak against.  It wasn't too long that I found out what cooties were, supposedly, and that I had thus joined the "retard kids"* in the opinion of my peers.

     *"Retard" was a common name for the mentally and physically challenged when I was growing up.  It isn't a very nice thing to say, but I mention it to illustrate precisely where I was in the social order.  In high school I enjoyed the freedom this state gave me as it allowed me to read with those kids and the teachers at a special table in the lunchroom.

     **Oh, and I'd better apologize now to anyone who shared a table with me in those years.  Yes, I was ignoring you, but only because the book I was reading was more interesting to me than whatever topic upon which you were attempting to gauge my opinion.

As before, I took pride in my being unjustly denounced, having in mind the Biblical passage which exhorts the reader to reflect 'woe upon you when men speak well of you' and further to believe it was well when they 'speak ill of you, for that is the way they spoke of the prophets'.  I figured that I was in good company if, like Old Testament prophets, I was being spoken ill of in the company of my peers.  Of course, I now know that this is an undesirable outcome or, to put it in modern lingo, I was full of crap.  After all, weren't those same prophets executed by strangling and fire?  In hindsight I can see that bullying is hazardous to your health.

The teasing I encountered was mostly convenient, active only if I should approach the other children or be forced into a work group with popular kids (or kids who wanted to be thought popular).  Then the whispered 'get away, cootie-breath" or similar hurtful expressions would begin.  As has always been my policy, I did not want to give purposeful offense so I kept my distance.  I still recall making the book "An Apple Ran" all by myself because no one else wanted to handle construction paper or crayons I had touched. 

In fact, the same teacher who taught that class was also our math and homeroom teacher.  I'll not speak her name for it adds nothing to her reputation when I say that she was very against my religion and, perforce, personally against me as the living embodiment of that sect in her classroom.  She always gave me bad marks.  One day in particular stands in my mind as reflective of her antipathy for me:  when asked by me to help understand her coursework on the giant abacus she loudly declared to the class that I was being lazy and disruptive by not doing the coursework.  She remarked that I could also be coloring and having fun as the other children were if I would only accept her authority and do my classwork.  Now you have to understand my combative nature when you read what I did next because it overrides my usual decorum and interferes with my love of rules and respect for authority: I stood up and told her to her face that she was a bad teacher who didn't care to help someone who needed help.

I got paddled twice that day.  The first time she took me into the hallway and closed the classroom door she made a show of raising her voice so the class could hear her instruct me to be civil to grown-ups, respectful of authority and to do my homework and classwork without complaint.  I'll admit I cried from that punishment, but manfully kept it to a minimum when she took me back into the room and sat me back down at the abacus.  After seeing that I hadn't made any headway on my assignment a few minutes later she asked if I was going to do my work.  I sat there and told her something like 'no. Not until you teach me how to do it.'  That was the second time I got paddled.  Let me tell you- it hurt!  I cried to rattle the windows then and, seeing that she'd gotten a larger reaction than perhaps anticipated, she sent me to the guidance counselor's office to await my father's arrival to take me home early.

Dare I mention that fellow, so gentle to other children, belonged to her church and disliked me with the same passion she exhibited?  It was not a happy day for me...

Later that same school year, in the Spring when the weather permitted outdoor recess, my pariah state finally brought me to the attention of two of our class' bullies.  One chased me around the playground frequently because my asking of protection from the teacher overseeing the recess was ignored.  The assigned teacher was a chain smoker and she was unwilling to get involved unless someone actually got hurt and then she would only send the injured to the nurse's office.  Losing toys thrown over the fence after being wrenched from my hands, trousers being ruined in the knee by the gravel, etc. were my daily experience.  It was from second grade onward that the name "Ben Gay" got attached to me permanently.  As my name is Ben it isn't such a far stretch to be named after the popular analgesic cream, but it was annoying once I learned from my father just what that name meant.  He never looked at me the same after I asked that question.  I got very little sympathy from my father, in fact, for when I told him of the bullying he reflected that the fathers of my bullies were the fathers of the bullies which had tormented him in his school years.  (Yes, we lived in a small community.)

As for me I became almost immune to the indignities to which I was subjected from then on in public school.  I can only suppose that people who commit suicide from such "gay" bullying and assaults do not have good emotional support at home and, possibly, do not become accustomed to the frustrations their tormentors use.  Of course, I cannot speak to the violent assaults some of these kids have endured.  If they did not report the crimes to the proper authority they have only themselves to blame.  If their friends didn't report the crimes- they share in that crime and were poor friends.  Finally, if the authorities did nothing to investigate or punish the attackers, they shall have to answer to their consciences.  I have had occasion to react as a responsible citizen when I saw others in danger from stronger opponents, so I have little respect for people who allow such attacks to happen to their knowledge.  I've never been one to let peer pressure dissuade me from a course of action I know to be right.

So, in review, what adults may view as harmless teasing and jockeying for social position may be precursors to more harmful behaviors.  I believe it should be below the dignity of one who calls themself a teacher to ignore such behavior.  Action- immediate action- is preferable to the old wait-and-see philosophy of the past.  It is a sorry thing if a thinking being allows a perceived wrong to go unreported or uncorrected when it is within their power to act.