BULLYING

All right, let's all face it.  Junior High or Middle School is the worst thing to ever be perpetrated on the American pre-teen since acne.  I HATED Junior High.  By the time I got to 7th grade they had converted my Junior High into a Middle School but I still refer to it as Junior High.  I'm old school.  It seemed to me even then, in the late 1920's, that everybody in that middle school hated being there, hated everybody else in the building and hated their life.  Even the teachers seemed to be angry about not quite making it to high school.

I grew up an army brat and my middle school was in Wiesbaden, Germany.  It was, I think, similar to being in a small town.  There were only so many of us stationed in Wiesbaden and we all went to the same school, movie theatre and stores.  Everybody knew everybody else, so once you were known as whatever they pegged you as, that's what you were.  Well, apparently, I was a fag.  At least that's the logical conclusion one would come to if you listened to what I was called on a daily basis.  I didn't even know what it meant.  I just knew it was bad because of the way it was said.

Now, I don't want anybody to think that all the kids in school were calling me this name.  It was mostly a small band of losers that were of the male gender.  Quite frankly, I think that word was a catch-all insult for anybody that didn't hang out with them.  I mean, it's a succinct and, still, socially acceptable way to diminish someone.  It doesn't take a lot of imagination.  I feel I'm safe in saying, they, collectively, had less than 1 gram of brain matter so imagination would be asking a lot.  They were all bad students.  They were pretty much all unattractive.  They were unhappy with their lives.  So they made others suffer for it, including me.

I remember at one point in my life thinking to myself "What am I doing to bring this upon myself?"  I was very shy and not very aggressive.  I usually walked with my head down looking at the ground.  I had very little confidence.  These are all things that contributed to my being treated badly.

I didn't even realize that until I happened to pick up a ladies' magazine one day.  While flipping through the magazine I came upon an article about how a woman could lessen the chances of getting attacked.  I couldn't imagine getting any relevant information for my middle school problems from a magazine article about rape but now I see the congruence.  Walk with your head up high.  Look where you are going.  Walk with purpose and pay attention.  I saw that all these things could help me in middle school.  Hold your purse in front of you was not as valuable.  So I started doing all those things.  Lo and behold, I started getting picked on less.

When I discovered that I also had a talent that was valuable it got even better.  I could dance.  Really well, I came to discover.  Because we were on a military base there weren't a lot of things to do.  So every weekend there would be one or two dances.  They would be at the school or the DYA, Dependents Youth Association.  It was also the late 70's and dancing was huge.  This made me very popular with all the girls.  The boys liked the girls, so this afforded me a little more status.  It also brought me attention from my tormentors and they made attempts to include me in their ranks.  I never joined them so they increased their negativity toward me once again.

I remember one time at a school dance I was outside the gym talking with Rita.  Rita was a very popular girl at the school.  We were good friends.  Rita was supposedly EASY.  I don't know if it was true or not but that's what she got pegged with so there you go.  I didn't care.  Anyway, we were talking and I noticed she looked over my shoulder.  She pushed me behind her and I saw that that group of guys had been surrounding me the whole time.  One of them, Rodney Thornton, said, "We were just going to spit on him."  They all laughed and made their way into the gym together.  It was a scary experience, I'm not going to lie.  I stayed though and danced the night away without event.

I could regale you with other stories of things they did to make me feel bad about myself but they're all so typical.  I will tell you that, after a couple of years, this almost daily negativity took its toll.  Think about it.  You are required to go to school.  You are required to go somewhere where you run the risk of mental and possibly physical abuse.  I dreaded going to school.  I never told my parents.  That would be the ultimate humiliation.

It finally reached a boiling point at 13.  I was in my room feeling sorry for myself, looking out the window.  I thought about suicide for the first and last time in my life.  I thought that would end it.  That would teach them.  They'd be sorry.  Nobody would care anyway.  The irony that I could think they'd be sorry and that nobody would care at the same time shows the faulty logic in this solution.

I don't know why but I had a huge moment of clarity.  I realized that in about a year I was going to be moving.  All I had to do was make it a year and I would be in a completely different place and I would probably never see any of these people again in my life.  This situation was temporary.  Suicide was not.  You know what else?  Someone would care.  My parents would have been devastated as would my sister and my brothers.  Those weren't the people I was trying to hurt.  So suicide was out of the question.  I never thought about that as a solution to anything ever again.

So I guess what I'm saying is don't be an idiot.  Sounds harsh but sometimes harshness is the only way to get a point through.  I know you might be going through something really difficult but remember there is someone that WILL be crushed when you take your life.  So you would become the bully to people that did nothing but care about you.  You would torment them for the rest of their lives.  Don't be selfish and unjust like the people bullying you.  Realize that it will pass.

If I'd have done the unthinkable that day I never would have made the numerous and wonderful friends that I've made.  I would not have been to Rome, Naples, Venice, London, Paris and many more places around the world.  I would never have seen the pyramids, the Acropolis, Leaning Tower of Pisa or The Grand Canyon.  I would never have known my niece and nephews.  That in itself would have been a huge loss.  I would never have had the chance of realizing my dream of becoming a working actor.  I wouldn't have written and performed in 6 reviews at The Second City.  The list goes on and on.

I'm not saying don't do anything.  Learn to walk with your head high.  Take a boxing class.  Find a talent.  Something that you can always turn to for a feeling of fulfillment.  Take a chance and do something you never thought you could do.  Even if you fail you will fail doing something instead of failing by doing nothing.  It gets better but only if you are still around to make it better.