Her name was Beth, and she was a demon from the blackest depths of hell, masquerading as a stunningly beautiful high school cheerleader. Those of us upon whom she unleashed her wrath knew better, knew that beneath that flawless skin was the psyche of mottled and twisted swamp thing that had crawled out of the muck.
I was a terminally shy kid in high school, and I’d mastered the art of fading into the background to escape notice. Unfortunately, the English class seating chart put me smack in front of Beth, dead center in her line of vision. It didn’t help that I’d gotten into the college she wanted to go to after she was rejected.
When she wasn’t mocking the clothes, hairstyles and general financial status of others, she liked to smack me in the back of the head, ostensibly for not passing the papers back to her fast enough.
I’d pay hundreds of dollars to teleport the person I am today back to my high school English class for just five minutes, so I could backhand her across the face real good just one time. (OK, maybe twice.)
I’m not a violent person, and I freely admit that it is patently absurd that I still harbor anger over this 15 years later. I don’t think of it often, but when I do, Beth still has the power to set me in a foul mood.
That, in turn, usually gets me thinking about the kids who truly caught hell in school, and I wonder how they’re doing. I’m not talking about the kids like me, who were occasionally insulted and assaulted — in other words, those who had a typical time of it in school. I’m talking about the couple of kids in every school who are so psychologically brutalized by others that I wonder if it still affects them decades later.
In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings and revelations that the shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, was picked on in school, a public backlash followed, with talk radio callers chiming in that everyone gets picked on, but not everyone picks up a gun.
That’s true, and Cho is the only person to blame for what he did last month. But what sticks in my craw about the whole “bullying” debate that has surrounded Cho is the tendency to lump all kids who get picked on into a single group, as if bullying is just a normal right of passage everyone goes through. For many people, that’s true.
But what a small group of kids has to endure is something else entirely. A few years ago I read an ACLU press release about the degrading psychological “torture” some terrorism suspects were forced to endure when they are interrogated by our government. I was unimpressed because I knew kids in high school who went through much worse. The difference, of course, was that the terrorists could make it stop by telling their interrogators what they wanted to know. Not so with these kids.
I’ve described how several of these students were treated by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools officials in this space over the years. There was Brittnay, who was beaten daily in between classes by a group of hair-brush wielding girls whose violence eventually escalated into a final, vicious attack in a school parking lot. Things went fuzzy after Brittnay’s head hit the concrete. Her parents eventually moved her to a school district in another county. A few years ago, the mother of Lauren Jay, then 13, pleaded with officials at Alexander Middle School to change her bus assignment after two other girls developed a habit of smacking Jay around. School officials did nothing, and Jay was beaten so badly she required surgery and spent two months drinking through a straw after one of the girls fractured her jaw.
More recently, I profiled a 13-year-old honors student who was sexually abused on a school bus by two boys the school system declined to punish, even though one of them admitted in writing to sexually abusing the girl. The school system’s solution was to remove the girl from the bus, forcing her parents to drive her to another bus stop.
When I was in school, it always amazed me how utterly oblivious teachers and administrators seemed to be to the plight of the kids who took the worst abuse.
It wasn’t that the kids who doled it out didn’t get in trouble — they did. But it was usually for stuff like making noise in class, not for the vicious nature of what they said, or the fact that they said it every day in ruthless attacks on the same person.
The worse a kid got picked on, the more invisible he or she seemed to become to the adults around them.
I guess nothing much has changed.
This article appears in May 2-8, 2007.
middle school..and my daughter had become one of several, including a teacher, who had suffered bruises from the fists of a well known boy who consistently lost it. Of course the answer from the school (Steel Creek) was that we should remove our daughter from the bus and drive her to school..punishing us rather than the problem. We stood up for ourselves..took a lot..but got things right..and for the first time, actually got a memo on the boy’s record..something that had not been done in the many priors.
Switch to my son..a good healthy lad..not a nerd or geek..who happened to be in the bathroom at the wrong time..even though PTO meetings had already brought up the standing fear that many students had of going to the bathroom because of the violence perp’d there..anyway..3 upper class males of an opposite race decided that my son shouldn’t be using their bathroom..they didn’t know him..but enjoyed beating him to the floor and then kicking him in the head so badly that we had hospital bills…only after me threatening legal action against the school and the administrators personally and making it clear that I have friends in the media who would help me with the story, did I wind up facing my son’s attackers and their parents in pretrial, with damages awarded.
coupled with the really bad CMS product, we eventually pulled our kids from the CMS system and saw amazing improvements and accerlation in learning..and amazing enough, some of the nonCMS schools don’t actually have daily beatings and assaults on teachers..yes, I witnessed a female student punch an assistant principal(female) in the chest repeatedly and no recourse was made.
You’re right, we all remember the bullies and the beautiful people who preyed on the less fortunates.I was usually grateful to be a more favored soul, but often was in turmoil as I saw lessers getting the daily abuse..knowing each time I stepped in..that I would be endangering my own standing..and as any teacher would say, if they admit it..they either feel like the nerds deserve their lot in life, or they were nerds themselves, never making it out of the school environment ito the working world…and even though they are now “adults”..the student bullies still strike fear into their hearts..so they let them continue to rule.
I always wonder what the deal is with kids who bully. Do their parents condone it? Do they know their child is a bully? Is it a discipline problem at home? Or is it just the parents fault for not instilling respect and appreciation for others? When I was in high school, there was a kid who was literally very small, probably around 5 ft tall. The bigger white guys ALWAYS messed with him, would pick him up and put him headfirst into the garbage can. They would humiliate him on a daily basis. He always had an embarrassed smile, as if he was trying to act like he didn’t care. But deep down, it had to hurt, and I know he was embarrassed. He was made to feel like an outcast simply for not looking like everyone else. (He’s probably very successful and rich now) When the VA tech shooting happened, it made me think about this guy. I wondered how he was doing, and how his life turned out. I think its so important for parents to really instill in their teenagers that how you treat people can really have an effect on others. I look back on the kids that I knew in grade school, middle school and high school who bullied people, including myself, and wondered what they lacked at home to make them feel like they needed to beat up others, or humiliate classmates who were not as attractive, popular or outgoing as they were.