It is 6:45 am as I creep soundlessly out of the bathroom, tip-toe down the hallway, and set down to await the arrival of the school bus in the wood room. I’m being extra quiet because I do not want to awaken my mother-she was up earlier when my father was leaving for work. I could hear them arguing, but I stayed in bed on this cold January morning, and these results were rewarded with being able to get myself ready for school.
This really is a relief for me because if the parents’ fight had been too bad, my mother’s raging emotions would have turned on me before the yellow school bus could make it’s way to our rural country home. Instead, she is sleeping soundly when I hear the bus coming down the road, and it is early-just like I knew it would be because of the snow, and mine is the first stop on the bus route. It is 7:10 am, and Mrs. E-as I affectionately call her, it ten minuets early. I’m out the door and on the bus before the sun comes up over the edge of the world, and this was how I started most mornings when I was around 11 years old. My parents were very deep into a divorce-of sorts, and it seemed as though neither had a clue what was going on in my life. I was a pretty independent child, and this is a trait that I am very happy has followed me into adulthood.
The very next year, the bus route switched directions-that would have been my 7th grade year in middle school, and so I was 12. Do you remember being 12 years old? I suggest, especially if you have children, that you remember. It’s often during the pre-teen and into the teenage years that most bullying occurs in school. The powers that be are always telling us these things, and as an adult it is easy to forget what it’s like to be a child, pre-teen and teenager. So….take a moment, a breath and remember what it was like when you were 12. Do you remember? I will never forget that year of my life…..
Again, it’s early morning and I am waiting for the bus alone, but it’s actually daylight now when the bus comes down the road. By now, I’m not only worrying about waking my mother, I am worried about getting on the bus. Mrs. E is wonderful, but there’s a lot of other people on the bus that are not so wonderful. I get onto the bus, and every seat has at least two students per seat, and over ½ of the bus seats have three students sitting in them. I make my way down the isle to the actual middle school section, and the driver basically orders two girls to let me sit with them. These two particular girls are in 8th grade, and so they are only a year older than myself. So…let’s call these girls Barbie and Jane.
Barbie and Jane do not want me to sit with them, and so I am put on the inside of the seat-against the window. As the over-crowded school bus makes it’s lazy way towards the school, I am repeatedly pushed into the window and bus wall. Now, this is something that I can endure and almost ignore on the 25 minute ride to school, but then Barbie smacks me in the face-knocking off my brand-new pair of glasses. One of the lenses shatters as it hit’s the window, and my tormentors laugh as I put the now useless glasses into my purse. Of course, these girls are quite popular in my school, and so they are busy letting everyone (all of my peers, so to speak) know that I am going to cry because of my glasses, and as the bus stops for us to get off, Barbie says to me, "You better keep your mouth shut, or I’ll beat you up on the ride home."
My reaction to this threat is absolute uncontrolled anger, and I attack the girl without even thinking about it. After all, I already know that I will have to answer to my own parents for the broken glasses-not to mention that I have to try to get thru a whole day of school without being able to see. She is older and stronger than me, but Barbie never saw the attack coming. I have been a year behind this girl in school since I started, and so she already knows that I will not fight her back. However, the wonderful Mrs. E. must enlist the help of two other drivers and an aide to break up the fight because neither one of us would back down.
Barbie is in need of medical attention, and so her parents pick her up to take a trip to the emergency room. My father is at work with the only car the family owes, and so it takes my mother until afternoon to find a rind into the school. I am told that I will be suspended for x amount of days, and that my parents will have to pay for the other girl’s hospital care during this time. However, when my mother finally shows up, she makes a scene in the office of the school, and I have to tell her why I would do such a thing, and I simply took my broken glasses out for her. The end of this pre-teen bullying incident ended with no suspension time on my part, and Barbie’s parents had to pay for a new set of glasses for me.
I have to give a lot of credit to my mother in this incident because if she had not been the way she was, I would most likely have gotten suspended. Even more importantly than that, the torment from the ‘in’ crowd at school would have most likely continued thru-out the rest of my school experience. My fear at that age was of her more than the other children at school, and she also knew that I respected authority. My mother had no idea of the torments of the other pre-teens that I attended school with-she never asked and was overly involved with the dysfunction of an alcoholic spouse. However, she did stand up for me that day at school, and that action gave me the courage to stand up more for myself in the years to come.
I personally have many credits to hand out when it came to overcoming bullying as a teen, but my mother and the wonderful Mrs. E (remember the bus driver?) both stood firm for me that day. Mrs. E had been my bus driver since about 3rd grade, and she would still be driving one of the rural bus routes in that school district some 20 years later when my own children started their walks thru school. Mrs. E’s sons were in high school when I was in elementary, but she did take the time to get to know some of the children on her bus too, and so she stood up to the powers that were back then in my defense as well.
Our world has changed in dramatic ways since I was 12, but there are still people whom care that work in the school systems, and it is often these people-teachers, bus drivers and classroom aides that battle bullying on the front lines, but I am just as sure that it is some of these same people that still instigate bullying in their own ways. How am I sure 38 years later?
Human nature has not changed for how long? Bullying is often the precursors for loving power and control of other people, just as outrage at inhuman actions can define a person’s love of justice and equality. A person’s values and morals are supposed to be formed at home, by one’s parents–and they are. Everyone’s issues begin at home, and as we grow we learn. Is our society really that different now? Support for children that are being bullied begins at home as well as on the front lines in classrooms and school systems across the country. True acceptance of people’s differences must be taught, and so the best way we can help children whom are being bullied today is to support them, but we have to start with recognizing the signs of bullying, and I will be addressing this issue in another article.
