Bullied (5 page)

All this apparent complicity makes me feel like the last thing I want to do is "fit in" with these people, or for that matter, any other group. I think when I get older I will be a loner and not care what people think. Everything about life, so far with children and adults, seems to be about pretending, and the only people I think are genuine are my Mother, Grandma, Grandpa, and some, if not all, of the Sisters of Charity. Well, I guess things could be even worse for me this year because I could have a stricter teacher such as Sister Ann Richards. All of us kids call her “Sister Ann Dickey” because of her rigid, unsmiling, strict disciplinary attitude.

Sister Mary Elizabeth, as a teacher, is more interesting because she is always coming up with new ways to get students into potential areas of interest. She skillfully works religion, ethics and law issues together. She says, “Education is important for the rest of your life because it determines whether you lead a very difficult life or an easier one. Which life do you think you want?” After waiting for some answers, she continues.

“Following the law and the Ten Commandments are both important in life. Would you prefer living in a nice home or in a jail cell? She went on, “Do you want to look at yourself in the mirror every morning and say “I am going to be the best thief I can be today?” The combination of a good education, obeying the Ten Commandments, the law and ethics is very important if you want to have a good opinion of yourself and have a nice life. Which would you prefer?”

She repeated that question about “looking in the mirror and telling yourself what you are going to be best at today” many times. This makes good sense to me so I try to keep this question in mind as I desperately guide myself through daily challenges. The way I understand this is, that I cannot take the easy way out if I wish to have pride in myself and what I achieve in life. It means I must pay attention to the law and the Ten Commandments if I want to have any chance of success on earth and not go to hell when I die. Along with a discussion of law, religion and life, she also gives us assignments to help us discover our various talents. Starting our eighth grade activities, she assigned us the challenge of writing a paper on a topic she considers an important one for us. The topic is “Freedom”.

Writing any “paper” is pure hell. I simply choose not to do the assignment, knowing it just means one session of detention that will help me miss some bullying after school. When the time comes for this detention period, instead of simply giving me another assignment, she tells me, “You sit down and write that paper I assigned to you, Patrick. If it is not complete in one detention class, you will have to stay every day after school until you complete it to my satisfaction.”

Oh no, this is the worst possible scenario I can imagine. To me, writing a long paper of a certain number of pages is the worst possible penalty. Getting beat up would even be better than this. I have no choice but to focus and finish it as quickly as I can. At the end of the first hour, I still had not finished it. The next afternoon after school, I finally complete it by the end of detention. Phew, I am glad that is over, I thought. That was awful.

The next day, in class in class she said,

“Today, we are going to have Sister Helen speak with us about that homework assignment you completed several days ago. Do you recall that assignment about writing a paper on Freedom? Ok, here is Sister Helen.”

Sister Helen is a new teacher at our school who is going to teach in the new Seton High School that just started this school year. Sister Helen takes over the class and discusses a topic called Oratorical Speaking. I never heard about this subject before, but she says,

“Do you know why the topic you wrote about, Freedom is such an important topic, and what it has to do with the subject of Oratory? It is because our founding fathers used oratorical speaking, or speaking well in public, to communicate the importance and relevance of this main principle behind the founding of our great country. I have each of your papers with me and I am going to ask you a few questions about them and what you wrote.”

Oh, brother, I thought, I hope I do not have to write any more stuff like that paper again. I hated doing it. Next, she starts asking each one of us, in turn, to each stand up and talk about what they wrote. I began to think about what I had laboriously written over the last two detention periods, made a few notes on a piece of paper and waited for my turn. I thought, talking I can do, that is easier than writing or fighting.

“Ok, Patrick, it is your turn to tell us what you wrote and why freedom is important”, she said.

“Freedom is our most important heritage,” I said.

“Why is that so?” she asked.

“Freedom is our most important heritage, because, if it were not for the laws that we have to protect it, it could not exist.”

“Why would Freedom not exist without these laws,” she asked.

That was a hard question, but I immediately thought of the writing on the base of my lamp, a gift from Christmas last year, that was next to my bed, and said,

“Because, like Abraham Lincoln said, we have inalienable rights protected by these laws and among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” I said loudly feeling very proud of myself that I had remembered some of that whole phrase that I looked at every night before going to bed. Funny, when standing up and speaking loudly in front of the class, I felt a strange surge of both fear mixed with excitement that I’d never felt before.

Sister Helen looked a little surprised, looked at me in an unusual, quiet and thoughtful way and then asked me to sit down, and she moved along to the next student in my class. I am glad that is over, I thought. What did I get myself into by not doing that homework? Two days later in school, Sister Mary Elizabeth asked me to stay after class was over. What have I done this time? When the students left, Sister said,

“Sister Helen and I have been talking about your paper on Freedom and we want to know if you would be comfortable giving a presentation on it. How do you feel about that?”

“What for?” I asked, wondering why anyone would want to hear me read the paper.

“The presentation would be sort of a contest to see which of our students will represent Saint Ambrose and Seton High in the Optimist Oratorical Award Presentations coming up. The Optimists are a non-profit group with high interest in young people’s education and oratorical abilities. Have you heard of them?”

“No, but why did you pick me?” I replied, vaguely remembering a presentation in the assembly area and gym that I had seen last year.

“Your paper really impressed Sister Helen and she thinks that, depending on how well you present it, you have a good chance of being selected,” Sister said.

All of this sounded very strange to me with all the effort I have been making to avoid schoolwork. Sister Mary Elizabeth seemed to be watching my face very closely to measure my attitude. She was trying to see inside my brain like always, with her Irish accent and all. Then I remembered that strange new feeling I had when I stood up and answered Sister Helen’s questions before the class.

“I can do it,” I said. How hard can it be, I thought.

I go to strange peoples doors all the time to try to get them to subscribe to the Endicott Daily Bulletin and I learned that I was good at talking to more than one person at a time, so how hard can it be to do the same thing in front of a group? It cannot be worse than facing Rick the Prick when I know he is going to beat me up.

“I can do it, Sister Mary Elizabeth, OK?” I said again with enthusiasm that surprised me and louder than I usually speak.

“Alright, Patrick, me Lad, I think you can do it, too! Me oh my.” she said, grinning in her knowing Irish way. I guess the determined and loud tone of my voice surprised her, even though she had known me since I was four or five years old.

“You will have to meet with Sister Helen after school over the next two weeks to practice for the contest. Are you OK with that?”

“Yes, Sister,” I said, thinking, Great, another way to stay after school and miss getting beat up.

Walking home, I thought about the situation I was in and wondered how it would really feel to stand up and speak in front of a large group of students and teachers. That could be scary! Could it be as scary as fighting people a foot taller than I almost every day? Can I really do this? I guess I will have something to tell Mom tonight. I wonder what it will be like to meet with Sister Helen tomorrow and the other days before the presentation. With all the fear and apprehension I am feeling, there is still this strange tingle of excitement way down deep.

Meeting with Sister Helen the next afternoon, she gave me a fresh copy of my paper, neatly typewritten, that had a few changes in it. Actually, I was surprised at how good the paper was now.

“I made a few corrections and changed the order of some of the parts of your presentation but the content is basically the same”, she said.

“Thanks, Sister. What are we going to do now?”

“What we are going to cover this afternoon is we are going to review your enunciation of the words, how you deliver them, when to pause, and what points to emphasize. Remember this in an oratorical contest and the manner in which you make the presentation may be even more important than the content. When making the presentation, the more of the meaning and structure you have nearly memorized, the better. Your focus must be more on the delivery itself. When you make the presentation, it is OK to change the words, as you feel necessary, because you are speaking extemporaneously. This will make the presentation sound more natural to the audience”.

All of this was new to me but it was interesting. The part I did not like is “nearly memorizing” this long document. I had never done anything like that before and I knew it would take a tremendous effort to do this. I thought I would just have to read it to the audience as I had seen others do in the past. As I started to read it to Sister Helen, she corrected my enunciation, speed of delivery, voice level and other issues. To my surprise, this exercise began to feel more like fun than work. This is the very first time in my life that anything at school felt anywhere close to fun.

Two days before I was to make my presentation, Mom, who acted very happy and strangely excited about the upcoming event, took me to a boys store and bought me a new sport coat. I knew she did not have much money to do this but she seemed, for some reason, to be more enthusiastic than I was about this presentation. She also was, to my surprise, planning to take the afternoon off from work so she could attend. That is unusual, I thought, maybe I should not have told her about this. I really did not think this was any big deal so why should she?

The day I was looking forward to and secretly dreading at the same time finally arrived. That morning, Mom got up a little earlier than usual and had my new sports jacket, pants, white shirt and tie all pressed and neatly arranged for me. She had a breakfast ready of scrambled eggs, bacon and toast because she said I needed some “good fuel for the afternoon event”. She was going to work in the morning but would take part of the afternoon off and attend the presentation scheduled in the early afternoon at Saint Ambrose School auditorium. She drove Lauren and me to school a little early that morning and then went on to work.

This day was just like any other school day but very soon, it was time for the big event. Since three of us were presenting from two different age categories, I had to wait my turn while two of my classmates made their presentations. As I waited, it felt like their presentations would go on forever. Even though I had planned to listen carefully to each presentation, somehow their words seemed like a whisper compared to the utter chaos that was going on inside my body and brain. My thoughts flipped back and forth between the words of the typed presentation in my lap to the smallness I felt sitting in my chair, one of several arranged in a long line in the center of the basketball court with the podium placed just in front of us dead center on the court.

This gymnasium, in a basement type location running the length of the entire school building, had an elevated bleacher area with an entry point on the first floor in the middle of the two widely spread entrances for the school. Sitting in the gymnasium, I felt smaller than I ever had in my life. I had to look up to see all of the approximately 150 students and teachers assembled there. As I scanned the crowd, I could see some Sisters, groups of parents, and school students from many grades populating the stadium. Almost everyone that had ever bullied me was also in those bleachers. I could also see my friend Patty and many of the other pretty girls from my class. If I had ever felt pressure to perform, this was it. If I did a bad job in making this presentation, I would never hear the end of it. On the other hand, all of these people, many whom I feared and hated, had to watch and listen to me, in silence, while I gave my presentation. That is certainly unusual compared to the way my miserable life has gone! I am scared but, at the same time, highly excited. I feel a sense of something welling up from the soles of my shoes that I had never felt before.

The school Principal finally called my name and I got up and walked uncertainly to the podium, and placed the typewritten presentation on the stand for reference. I hope I will not need it, but it will be there in case I do. I remembered the things Sister Helen had taught me about speaking “extemporaneously”. This meant that I did not have to give the presentation verbatim word for word but deliver the meaning of each sentence with clarity, even with a different choice of words.

Before starting the presentation, I looked up into the bleachers high above the basketball court. In the stands, I could see Rick and his brothers who were all laughing and shaking their heads at the ridiculous idea of little short red headed, freckle faced Patrick that they enjoyed punching and humiliating daily actually getting ready to speak to them. Donald and his elite group were there as well as my friend big Bernie and his brothers, and most of the friends, and schoolmates, and enemies I had known my entire life. I am going to show them something, I thought.