Been There, Done That

by Mike Winchell

  More than fifty years later all I can tell you is that the memory of that afternoon burned itself into both my consciousness and my conscience.

  I do not remember if I took immediate action. I think not likely. And though I don’t remember exactly how it changed, I can tell you that by the time we were in high school, Andrew was my best friend.

  Yet close as we became in those years, we never spoke of fourth grade and how he had been shut out.

  Perhaps that was kindness on my part.

  Or maybe it was kindness on his part, not reminding me of how things had been.

  I know I never had the courage to bring it up.

  But our teacher had the courage. She broke the silence and called us out on our behavior, on our cruelty.

  And that’s all it takes, I think, to snap the cycle of bullying. Even if—maybe especially if—the bullying is quiet and unintentional.

  Truly, we didn’t know how beastly we were being, we “good” kids. But our teacher had the strength, and the honesty, to tell us how our behavior was affecting one of our fellow students. To tell us what we were doing, and to try to stop it.

  Which is exactly what a great teacher should do. Help you see what you are, and help you to be better.

  So thank you, Mrs. Pike.

  And, belatedly, my apologies to Andrew.

  I never meant to hurt you.

  Bruce Coville

  THE STORY

  THERE'S ALWAYS A GOAT

  You know what makes me cranky?

  Well, a lot of things, actually. But the thing I’m thinking of right now is finding out that I’ve been a butthead when I was thinking all along that I was a nice kid.

  I mean, I am a nice kid, mostly. I don’t pick on people. I’m kind to animals. I’d even help little old ladies cross the street, if I could find one who needed it. Most of the old ladies I know would probably clock me if I offered it.

  And if you consider the fact that I’m a PK (Preacher’s Kid), I’m especially nice, since we have a reputation of behaving badly to make up for all the goodness and light we get forced down our throats at home.

  Of course, that’s mostly hooey. My mom (she’s the preacher in the family, my dad is a computer salesman) expects the three of us to behave and stay out of trouble, but she also knows we’re gonna screw up on occasion and doesn’t get all bent out of shape about it when we do. Mostly she just gives us The Look. And believe me, when you get The Look from someone who is your mom and your minister all rolled into one, you know you’ve been Look-i-fied!

  Anyway, here’s what got me thinking about all this. There was this kid in my class who . . . well, let’s say he wasn’t the kind of kid who got invited to birthday parties.

  It wasn’t that the rest of us disliked him. We weren’t mean to him, at least not actively. We all just kind of ignored him, without understanding how incredibly mean that could be. And, to be honest, I wouldn’t have noticed or changed things if it hadn’t been for this stupid Sunday School assignment I got last week.

  Yes, of course I go to Sunday School. You think I have a choice?

  Actually, I kind of like the class, mostly because our teacher, Mr. Hemsforth, is a pretty cool guy. He’s a big Sherlock Holmes fan, and he likes to talk about observation and details. And last Sunday he cooked up an assignment that combined his Sherlock Holmes fanboyism with something kind of churchy.

  “Here’s what I want you to do this week,” he said with his usual enthusiasm. “Pick out someone you don’t know well and observe him or her closely. Learn something about your subject. But try not to let him or her know you’re doing this. Pay attention! Notice details! And here’s the important part: See if you can figure out something good you can do for that person without letting him or her know what you’re up to.”

  We all groaned a little, of course, but that’s just what you do when you get an assignment. I actually thought it sounded kind of interesting, and as I was walking home from church I tried to figure out who I should choose. I mean, most of the people around me I know at least medium well.

  Then I thought of Stan Audibert. Stan was definitely the kid in our class I knew the least about. So on Monday I started observing him. I don’t mean just watching him. Heck, we’d been in the same class for three years now, ever since his family moved to town in the middle of third grade. So I already knew that he was smart, had bad teeth, and sometimes smelled a little funny. But now I . . . well, I paid attention.

  And the truth was, I didn’t like what I saw.

  I don’t mean I didn’t like what I saw about Stan. He didn’t do anything wrong. What I didn’t like was that hardly anyone said a thing to him for the entire day.

  He didn’t sit alone at lunch, but he might as well have. He was at the end of the table, and nobody paid any attention to him.

  What was the reason for this?

  When I thought about it, I realized I had hardly ever spoken to Stan myself. It wasn’t that I disliked him. He had certainly never done anything bad to me.

  It was then that I realized that our class had a kind of unspoken rule about Stan: This is the guy we don’t talk to.

  What the heck?!?

  When we went outside for recess that day it was pretty much the same thing. Most of us have a set group of friends we hang out with. I’m a little different in that I tend to drift between two or three groups because I kind of like pretty much everyone.

  Everyone but Stan?

  I peeled off from my friends for a while and sat against the wall of the school. I had a paperback book I was pretending to read, but really it was Sherlock time. I was watching Stan and making mental notes.

  He didn’t hang out with anyone.

  This situation was stranger than I had anticipated when I chose Stan to be the person I observed.

  The next day, Tuesday, I decided to follow him home. Which makes me sound like a puppy or something, but the idea, of course, was to do it without being noticed. Very unpuppylike.

  The reason I could do it at all was that our town is pretty small, and if you live within a mile of the school, you’re automatically a walker. Except by that year I was actually a biker, since I rode my bike to school most days. Even so, I was still called a walker.

  Stan was a walker, too.

  So now I was going to be a walker/stalker, which sounds kind of creepy. But I was just trying to learn about Stan and figure out how I could do something nice for him without him knowing what I was up to.

  This assignment of Mr. Hemsforth’s was turning out to be trickier, and not only more interesting but also more troubling, than I had expected.

  When the walkers were released that afternoon, I shot down to the bike rack and unlocked my bike. The rack is in the back of the school, and the walkers go out the front, so I wanted to get around fast enough to see which way Stan went.

  But I was too slow and missed him. Dang!

  The next day, Wednesday, I walked to school, figuring that way I would leave through the front entrance and could see where Stan was going. And if I was going to follow him, it probably made more sense to do so on foot, anyway.

  I continued to watch Stan through the day, of course, and did notice one thing that I hadn’t before. He liked comic books. Whenever he finished his work early, or had some free time, he would pull a comic book out of his desk and start reading it.

  How had I not seen this before? I love comic books, too! I have a huge and nerd-tastic collection.

  That afternoon I went out the front way and saw Stan turn left at the corner of Cherry and Main. I waited for a few minutes, then sprinted toward the corner and turned it.

  Good! He was still in sight.

  For the next several minutes I dawdled along a couple of blocks behind him. He didn’t notice that I was following him, and why would he? As far as I could tell, nobody ever paid much a
ttention to him. So why would he expect someone to be following him now?

  I nearly lost him once, when he made two turns in a row, but other than that following him was easy. Finally he swung off into a driveway. We were in a not-very-good neighborhood now, and the house looked kind of run-down. I hurried forward in time to see that he didn’t go inside. Instead he walked past the house and into the backyard, where there was a big tree. Pieces of wood had been nailed to the trunk, and I realized that they made a ladder. He had a tree house. Cool!

  I waited for a while, trying to decide what to do. Finally I went to the ladder and started to climb. I was going to knock at the bottom of the tree house and say, “Anybody home?” I realized I was kind of breaking the rule for the assignment by doing that, but I had become more and more curious about Stan.

  And now, as I write this down, I realize something else. I felt okay about doing that because we weren’t in school, and no one would see me talking to him.

  What the heck?!?

  As it turned out, I didn’t go all the way up to the tree house. I got about halfway on the ladder when I heard something strange. I stopped so I could listen more carefully. Then I knew what it was, and I felt sick to my stomach.

  Stan was crying.

  I couldn’t go up there now, not out of the blue like this. If we had been friends it would be one thing, but we weren’t. Because I’d never made the effort.

  I wondered what he was crying about. There could be all kinds of things in his life worth crying over . . . when my dad got really sick last year I cried a lot, because I was so frightened. Or maybe Stan’s puppy just died. But we wouldn’t know that, would we, since none of us ever talked to him. Now that I was so aware of how lonely Stan must be, I couldn’t help but think that he was probably crying because of how we had been treating him.

  Even if that wasn’t the reason, we certainly weren’t doing anything to make the poor guy feel better about whatever was bothering him.

  • • •

  That night I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about Stan, all alone all day, then crying in his tree house when he got home.

  I felt disgusted with myself. Disgusted with all of us.

  Finally I went down to my mother’s study, where I knew she was working on her sermon for Sunday.

  Her door was open, so I knocked on the frame. She looked up from her notes, surprised.

  “Anything wrong, Bobby?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Well, come on in,” she said. “Let’s talk about it.”

  I sat in the big chair that my sibs and I call the confessional (even though we’re not Catholic) because it’s where we sit when we have to fess up to Mom about something that we’ve done. But I also sit there when I just need to talk to her.

  I talked to her now about Stan, told her what I had seen, what I had heard that afternoon, and how puzzled I was that we had all cut him out so much.

  When I was done she sighed and said, “Well, it sounds like your class has found its goat.”

  “Care to tell me what the heck that means?” I asked.

  “It’s a sad thing about humans,” she said. “But there’s almost always a goat, someone the group chooses to be the outside one. Calling that person the goat goes right back to the Bible. Here, let me see if I can find the right passage.”

  I expected her to go to the big Bible that sits on the wooden stand beside her desk. Instead she went to her laptop.

  “If you know a few key words, Google can find the verse you’re looking for in no time flat,” she said, giving me a wink. “Ah, here we go! Leviticus sixteen, verse twenty-one: And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness.

  “That’s called a scapegoat, Bobby. And people transfer not just their sins but their insecurities, their discomforts, and their fears onto the goat so they can feel better about themselves. We’ve been doing it for thousands of years. Only it’s not usually a goat, which really wouldn’t care. It’s a human. As long as there is someone who doesn’t fit in, someone to shut out, someone to be the ‘goat,’ everyone else feels more comfortable about him- or herself.”

  “That’s awful!” I said.

  “Yes, it is,” said Mom. Then she looked me right in the eye and said, “So . . . what are you going to do about it?”

  Which is totally the way she operates.

  I tossed and turned a lot that night, but by morning I had my plan.

  I went downstairs to the family computer—which is separate from Mom’s, which is sacred. It’s not sacred because she writes her sermons on it. It’s sacred because she would forget she is a minister and kill us all if anything happened to it.

  After several drafts I had this invitation:

  Comic Book Swap

  Bring your extra comics, any ones that you would like to trade, to class on Friday. During our TGIF free time at the end of the day, we’ll meet at the back of the room for a swap fest! This could be a blast!

  I posted it on the bulletin board where we put the Friday afternoon announcements for group meetings.

  Then I handed copies of it to the five kids—three guys and two girls—who I knew were big comic book freaks.

  And then I took one over to Stan’s desk.

  “Here,” I said, handing it to him. “I noticed you like comic books. I hope you’ll join us.”

  Stan looked at me, clearly surprised, a little puzzled.

  Then he read the flyer.

  And then he smiled.

  • • •

  I think Mr. Hemsforth will be pleased when I give my report on Sunday.

  Truth is, it doesn’t matter if he is or not.

  I’m pretty sure I got it right.

  And I feel better about myself than I have all week.

  Mike Winchell

  PRANKS GONE WRONG

  You’ve just spent forty minutes in the classroom learning valuable information. Now you have a little time to kill between classes, and your friends are walking your way. This is not good. Hope you can stay out of trouble.

  Authors Wendy Mass and Jacqueline West know about testing the rules. And their stories show that sometimes jokes can go a little too far at school.

  Wendy Mass

  WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

  PRANKS

  Every year in mid-August I’d wait by the mailbox to see if that day’s mail would bring my teacher assignment for the following school year. I couldn’t wait to call my friends to find out if we were lucky enough to be in the same class. I had gotten lucky each year and never had to feel those first-day jitters without a good friend by my side. But my luck ran out in fifth grade.

  My teacher assignment finally arrived that summer, and after a flurry of phone calls, I determined that I wouldn’t have any of my friends in my fifth-grade class. Not a single one.

  I was so upset that my mother took pity on me and called the school to see if she could get me transferred into another class. When that didn’t work, she convinced them to give her a list of the other students in the class. That’s how I learned that a girl named Amy who lived down the street was going to be my classmate.

  Amy lived only about ten houses away, but it might as well have been ten states away for all that we had in common. She had three older brothers and was considered to be more worldly than the rest of us in our suburban late-seventies neighborhood. She knew all the curse words and had been to New York City three times! She laughed loud and long and didn’t care what people thought of her. In all the years we’d lived so close, we hadn’t said more than three words to each other.

  Before school started that year, our mothers got us together, so we co
uld bond, I guess. To my surprise, we did bond. Maybe it was because she was so close with her brothers, but I don’t think she had other friends who were girls. Amy must have been as anxious as I was to have a friend in class. She quickly became the ringleader of our little twosome, and I was fine with that. She was fearless and bold, and when school started her friendship gave me confidence. I looked forward to school each day to see what new stunt she would come up with. We would hide bags of Lucky Charms cereal in our desks and nosh on them during class, when we weren’t busy passing notes. We would make crank phone calls on the pay phone in the hallway, running away when the operator would call back. Then we got more daring.

  Amy played the string bass at school, and the instrument was too big to travel with, so she could only practice at school. She was given the key to the band room in case she needed to get in there when the music teacher wasn’t around. We realized it was a master skeleton key that would open many of the doors in the school, so of course Amy pocketed it. Owning the key made us feel powerful, like we had a big secret. It didn’t work on our own classroom door, though, so we thought of a clever way to get in and out of our classroom when the door was locked at lunch.

  We would make sure we were last in line to leave the classroom, and then we would stick a ruler up against the doorjamb so the door would look fully closed but really wasn’t locked. We would later sneak back in and do little pranks, like moving people’s desks, or leaving “secret admirer” love notes for various boys. Inevitably, we got caught. The teacher had alerted all the other kids to keep an eye out for how the culprits were getting in, so basically twenty kids were set on our trail. One boy saw Amy place the ruler in the door as we left one day for lunch and alerted the teacher—loudly! The teacher didn’t formally punish us; I guess she figured severe embarrassment was good enough. She also moved our desks to opposite sides of the room. After school we wrote a letter together, promising always to be friends and never to let the spirit of our adventures fade away. Then we burned it and put the ashes in a sandwich bag that we buried under a flat stone near the driveway of Amy’s house. We promised we’d dig it up together one day.