Bully

Jack and I were walking the dog last night and we were talking about bullying.  I didn't recall much bullying of kids when I was in elementary, middle or high school.  Jack seems to think it must have existed, and I didn't notice.  I didn't notice the boys pushing and shoving each other around.  I got in the conversation about bullying this morning with my neighbor as we crossed paths on the morning dog walk.  I told him we saw The Imitation Game this weekend about Alan Turing, the man who is credited with developing the universal machine, or the basis of the modern computer.  Some of the criticism of the movie is that Alan really wasn't a bully in the workplace, but was in fact a nice, affable, guy.  No doubt he was odd, but not really the jerk he was portrayed to be.  A few months ago, I started reading Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges.  Alan was significantly bullied at boarding school.  It seems that bullying is de rigueur in boarding schools.  The New Yorker recently had an article about a man who tracked down the boy who bullied him at board school.  The bully could not remember bullying the author of the article -- he only remembered how he himself was bullied at school.

I digress.  I started thinking about this one kid in my elementary school who was considered a bully.  I was telling Jack last night that this guy Jake was kind of a jerk.  No one really liked him, and he had no friends.  He wasn't so much a kid who pushed of shoved other kids.  The modern definition of bullying is intimidating or trying to over power someone.  This guy was mostly a loud mouth and annoying, yet kids thought he was a bully.  He was bigger than everyone else by a head or so, and he had that tough guy look.  He wore the same clothes everyday -- a white t-shirt, but more of the lightweight underwear type.  His eyes were slightly crossed, not horribly, and he had a furrowed brow, which made him look like he was trying to be mad.  He probably did do something rotten to some kid along the way, and the rest of the class thought Jake was a jerk.  I think he threatened to punch kids once in a while, but I don't think he ever did.  We were rather open about our disdain for his behavior, making up little songs to make fun of him.  Maybe we imagined he threatened kids to justify our mean songs about him.

This morning as I was talking to my neighbor about The Imitation Game, we got on the subject of bullying.  I told him about the New Yorker article, and I thought again of Jake, the boy I knew in elementary school.  I seem to recall that Jake was not the best student, perhaps he struggled.  He ended up switching to a different elementary school, where word has it he ended up doing fine, making friends and the like.  

Now as a parent, standing on the corner thousands of miles away from where I grew up, I started thinking of Jake as if he were a student in my kids' school.  He might have had a learning disability that went undiagnosed.  Perhaps he had a hard home life.  Maybe his dad was an alcoholic, or his parents couldn't afford any clothes other than the three pack of Fruit of the Loom sold at Kmart.  

I started to think that maybe we were the bullies, the entire class who mocked and teased this boy.   We thought he was a jerk, so he was generally excluded from recess and lunch games.  I suppose his social skills were mediocre, and the only way he might have known to connect was through being tough.  I thought, "Well I am girl.  I don't have to be his friend or nice to him.  It isn't expected of me."  We weren't as bad as a boarding school, but in a way weren't much better.  Here was a kid who didn't fit in, and all of us turned against him.  No one gave him a chance to be his friend.  Granted, he brought some of this on himself, but we didn't help.

My whole elementary class wasn't completely crappy.  When we were in third grade, an administrator from the district came to school and told us that we were chosen to have Alex in our class.  Alex was a special kid, different from others.  The district had to be very selective about which class could have Alex.  They needed students who would be kind, understanding and patient with Alex.  Our class was picked to be best out of all of the elementary schools around.  Alex had braces on his legs and some behavioral issues.  We all were nice to Alex because we were chosen, selected to have him.  Instead of laughing at Alex, we laughed with him.  We didn't have hot lunches at my school, so the PTA every few months would sponsor "Hamburger Day" where the moms would order a few hundred plain hamburgers from McDonalds and a similar number of individual size bags of Jay's potato chips.  The bags of chips were puffed up with air.  I remember Alex saying, "Hey, watch this!" as he pounded his fist against the bag of chips.  The bag exploded, and little shards of salty and greasy chips went flying everywhere.  I was a goody two-shoes who never stepped out of line, and I thought this was the funniest thing ever.  I imagine the room parents were highly annoyed at the mess, but the kids thought it was hilarious.  Even as an adult, I think it is funny.

When I got home from my morning walk with Fox, I googled Jake to see if I could find him.  I found his profile on Facebook, and found that he was friends with several kids from my elementary school.  I moved from suburban Chicago to Ohio when I was twelve.  I didn't go to middle or high school with this group of kids, so I never heard the rest of Jake's story.  Somewhere along the way, he got a second chance, not just from the teachers and schools, but from the kids.  I am glad they gave it to him.