Bullied (2 page)

After trying for five to ten minutes to revive the child, a doctor finally came, and after a few more minutes they covered the boy’s body and face with a large towel. Nothing seemed to happen for a while as we all watched in silence. Then, a lifeguard led a tall woman in from one of the gates in the fence up to where the little boy was laying on the concrete deck. One of the lifeguards pulled the towel back so she could see the boy’s face, and her head suddenly snapped backwards and she screamed and cried hysterically. Two of the lifeguards helped her away from the pool and a few minutes later an ambulance arrives to take the little boy away. That little boy who was panic stricken and not good at treading water was obviously her son.

That drowned child could have been me if my family had not insisted that I learn to swim. Because of the rule that I heard about often when I was three years old, I learned to swim as a very young child after Mom took me to the pool, taught me as much as she could, and then enrolled me in swimming classes. The death of this child gives me a very frightening but clear concept of life. If you want to live, you have to fight the bigger people to do so. The image conscious popular people like Rick and his brothers will do whatever they can to the people like me, even if it means that I die. As much as I hate violence, the death of this child means that I have to learn to be violent just to live.

When I walk around the neighborhood, visit my friends, and go to the Boys Club and park to play I see Rick more often and he always punches and shoves me. His favorite name for me is “Fag” or “Queer” and I am not sure what that means. Some of the other kids like to shove or punch me, too. In spite of the fear of these encounters, I go anyway. Playing baseball at the Boys Club field is a lot of fun and there are usually quite a few of us on the baseball diamond waiting to play. First, the group chooses two captains, and then the captains pick their players one at a time.

Because I am the smallest, I am last to join the team or, sometimes, not at all, if there are more players than we need for two teams. The most popular kids are first to be selected. One of the popular kids in my class is Donald, a tall nice looking boy who usually walks around with three or four of his friends, the most popular kids. When he is a team Captain, he will pick all of his friends first before choosing any others. The popular kids, as well as the bigger kids, think they have a right to do anything they want to a red headed, freckle faced person my size that is not with the in-group. This includes telling the other captain of the competing team not to pick me either. If I say or do anything offensive to him, he will punch me in the arm or push me down on the ground. Nevertheless, I still like playing baseball and get to play most of the time.

I spend my summer between the park, the pool and the Boys Club baseball diamond. Nevertheless, like all summers they have to end so I am disappointed when August comes and goes. Now, at 10 1/2 years old, I am in sixth grade and I still have three more long years before moving on to high school. There is some talk right now about perhaps my elementary school, Saint Ambrose, extending the elementary school into the high school years as well. I do not know how I feel about this; maybe I would like to attend Union Endicott High School instead. I have been looking forward to attending UE high school, where my mother and her sisters Mary and Elaine graduated years ago.

One of the things that I am not happy to hear about this year is that there is interest on the part of some fifth-graders to gain status by fighting a sixth grader. I had three different kids from fifth grade ask me to fight. I try talking them out of it and sometimes it works, and sometimes it does not. However, I will definitely never “meet them” anywhere to fight. They have to put me in a position where I have no choice. Besides, I am smaller than everyone, even than many boys in the lower grades, is so I usually lose, and it hurts.

When other kids hit me while at school, no one ever seems to notice. I noted the similarity between this and when something happens to me in front of somebody's house with adults watching. No one ever does anything about it or intervenes. Whenever I hear adults talking, they usually say that kids’ picking on each other is just normal, part of growing up, and there is no harm done. They have no idea how much it hurts and scares me. Do the adults really understand how terrifying this feels? Why don't they? Have they forgotten what it was like when they were kids?

I am glad when in the classroom in school where I am safe most of the time, except when I have to go to the boy's bathroom. In addition, I have to endure daily pain inflicted by the Sisters. Regarding the Sisters, they all have very different personalities, for example, Sister Prentice, Sister Donna and Sister Honorine are always nice but others, like Sister Paula, Sister Ann Richards and some others are stern and unsmiling. The one thing they all have in common is they never hit me but they will grab me by the arm, hair or my ears for almost any reason, and this always hurts.

It seems, from the minute I get up, to the time I go to bed, I have different people grabbing, shoving, threatening, punching and screaming at me. Is this what life is supposed to be like? Should I really have to endure this just for a Catholic education to prepare me to live my life? It does not make any sense, and I want it to stop.

I have to figure out a way to avoid these assaults. Traveling to school in the morning, it takes me just 20 minutes to get there. I need to time the walk so I arrive just as the bell rings so I do not have to stand outside with others, but if I do not enter the school right when the bell rings, I will be late and have to stay in detention. However, that might not be bad, because the bullies are usually gone when I get out. This is a great idea! I could just skip homework and they will keep me after school. That is okay because I would rather spend an extra hour in school every day than face a beating. These are both good ideas.

Leaving at the last minute for school as well as refusing to do homework is two strategies to reduce pain. Sometimes Mom makes sure I do my homework at night, but when going to school I may not turn it in. Many times, I am the only kid staying after school in automatic detention for not submitting homework. Since I am the only one, the teacher will sometimes, after regular school hours take me to the convent, a large house on school property where the Sisters live. The priests live in a different house, also on school property. When I am at the convent doing my work, I say hello to the Sisters as they pass by. I know most of them by name and many seem surprised how often I am there. After a while, my presence at the convent after school became “normal”. One of the Sisters, Sister Honorine, gave me the nickname of “The Ornament”, because I am there so often.

School is OK, if not for the violence. I try to think what I do that makes kids pick on me. I know that one of those things might be that it is hard for me to sit in that desk all day without moving around a lot. I also have a lot of trouble paying attention to the teacher, especially when other kids are all around me and I am in the middle of a row. Since Sister Mary Elizabeth introduced me to it, I actually like to be in the front seat of a row because it is easier for me not to be distracted and understand what the teacher is saying.

Thinking of things that make me “different”, I know that when I am talking to other kids, my attention wanders because of other things going on around me. By their facial expressions, I can tell there is something, whatever it is. I like many of the kids I meet in school but a few of them that think I am “different” are the ones that cause most of my trouble, such as popular kids, like Donald.

I have the most respect for the nice girls in my classes. When coming to school, they look clean and pretty in their white blouses and blue dress uniforms from shoulders to knees. I like their smell and the look of their normally short and neat hair. Patty, my friend from kindergarten, is still in my class and always looks pretty, and is still friendly.

When sick with a cold, I get to stay home and spend the day in bed with my books and radio. Constant fear and apprehension from the bullying makes me want to be sick every day. Asthma, colds and flu are various illnesses I can easily fake to take a sick day. Quite often I simply tell my Mom I am sick and, because she is usually rushing to get to work, she does not question me in detail about how I feel. I know she will not insist on bringing me to a doctor because she cannot afford it and, after she leaves for work, I can do as I please around the house.

When I am home sick, Grandma does not come upstairs very often because she is heavy and does not like the stairs. When Grandpa comes home for lunch, he may come up briefly to check on me, other than that, I am alone at home all day. Being alone is a lot more comfortable than being with other kids so I do not think I will ever like to be around large groups of people. Somehow, large groups always mean that someone or a smaller group will try to intimidate or dominate me for some reason. I do not like that.

This past year, some parts of life have started to change a great deal, as far as my relations with other kids, and not for the better. During my next school year, in 7
^th
grade, I will turn 11 years old and hope I can make new friends and feel better about my life.

I am 11 and things seem to be changing in my body. Every morning when I get up, my penis is hard and stiff for some reason. I also have a powerful warm feeling in my groin, stomach and thighs all the time. I do not know why I have this feeling but I hear from other boys that it is about something called "puberty”. I am not sure what that means. As much as I am curious about all these feelings, I do not have anyone I can ask about it. If I had a Daddy, I would ask him. My Mom has never been a boy, so she would not know anything about it. My grandfather has never been somebody whom I can ask these types of questions. I have had similar feelings before, but it was never this persistent and powerful. Not understanding why this is happening and what it means is very confusing.

When speaking to friends, they do not have answers for me either. I guess all of the boys are experiencing the same thing and it is a big mystery. I seem to get this feeling all the time for no particular reason even when alone. I feel it a little more whenever I look at my friend Patty, because I like her light brown hair and sweet face. I also get this feeling when I see my sister's friend, Dona. She has black hair, dark eyes, a slim body and beautiful smile. She is probably the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life. Every time she walks past my house and smiles, I get an erection. I do not know what I would do with all these feelings and I can never get the courage to tell her how much I like her. Well, this is just another sometimes-overwhelming mystery. There are so many, including some other feelings that I do not understand.

The second worst feeling to that pain from thighs to chest that I wake up with is that very sad feeling. I heard my Grandparents recently talking about a sad feeling that runs in our family they called “melancholy”. That word does not seem to describe the depth of feeling that I have but it may be the same. It makes the world seem like an awful place and all of the problems that I am having are my own fault. That feeling just makes everything seem so hopeless. What complicates this even more is when the weather is awful and the sky is overcast, I even feel worse. Knowing I am that way, I dread the winters because we never see the sun for months at a time. I learned recently that where I live in upstate New York, there are only 28 days of sunshine each year and none of them occurs in the winter months. Because of this, the months from November to March are my worst time of the year. That is also the same time that bullying is worst. I wonder if there is any connection.

Seventh grade is a long way toward the top grades in elementary school. I would normally be leaving Saint Ambrose and starting Union Endicott high school at the end of next year after the eighth grade. As much as I sometimes like certain Sisters, who work very hard to teach me, I would like to try public school for a change. The feeling of going to a Catholic school where I learn about religion an hour every day, and then face the violence from other students, as well as from some of the adults in my family, just confuses me. I always wonder what bearing this religion, discipline and holy authority has in making it OK for people to bully me all the time. It makes me feel different from everyone else, but I also do not understand why they call me strange names like Fag, Queer, Shorty, Red, Red Ass, Freckles, Spots, Creep and Weirdo all the time. There are many other names, too many to remember, and there are always new ones. I am sure if I were taller and tougher, I would not have this problem.

I do have some friends that are good company. One of my friends, another bigger kid named Bernie, my age, is a very strong person, and he is funny a lot of the time. He has two brothers and they all walk to school along the same route that I do. Since they live about a block away from my house and know what I have to deal with, Bernie’s younger brother asked me if I want to walk to school with them every day but I know if I do that, I will have to obey Bernie because he is the leader. I think I would rather be alone because I would just be swapping several bullies for another one.

My strategy of leaving home 20 minutes before the bell sounds four blocks away seems to be working. I often arrive and see bullies that I know want to fight me, quickly entering the school before they are late. If they see me, they may come up to me on my lunch break now. The process usually starts with them calling me a name.

“Hey, little Shorty, how are you doing?” It frightens me when this happens because I know what will happen next. Then they push me in the chest, hoping I would push them back so they can hit me. Sometimes, if they are not too much bigger than I am, when those kids push or hit me, and no Sisters are around, I try to hit them in the face as hard as I can. This surprised a few of them recently and some leave me alone after that. The bigger ones simply wait and beat me up again on the way home. While in school, I have to think about that while feeling that pain in my stomach.