On Bullying

Little kids are smarter than movies give them credit for. They don't walk around in tightly knit groups with a leader who looks like a future gang leader.

Let me tell you what they do.

There are much crueler things than intimidation. When I was in school, that little gang thing never happened except for one time when two kids chased me around the playground. I was young, but I knew that if they caught me, then they would hurt me. That was my first thought, that they were going to hurt me.

I didn't think that they were just playing. Maybe I saw a malicious fire in their eyes, young as they were, or maybe it was because I wasn't being ignored.

There were two ways that I was bullied in school. The first was that everyone ignored me. The second was that when they weren't ignoring me, they were calling me names. I know, that second one sounds petty to care about. It's not so petty when you're told that the only reason you got a part in the school play was because you were a teacher's pet, not because you had talent. It's not so petty when the only time someone talks to you is to make fun of you.

Ignoring someone is so sly, so very sly. It makes you alone. Alone at lunch. Alone in class. Alone in recess. The teachers say to sit down and shut up, but you weren't saying anything in the first place, so you try to take up even less space because you think that the teacher was talking to you. Maybe being smaller and invisible would make the other kids happy, make the teacher happy, make your parents happy.

This is what bullying does. It doesn't just give kids black eyes. It gives them broken ways of seeing themselves.