Except for one thing.
That’s the reason I’m writing. But I’m not sure it will make sense if I just blurt it out, so I’m going to ease in with a few lessons I’ve learned over the years—stuff I wish someone would have told me when I was sixteen.
That guy? So not worth fighting over. I know you’ve had problems with girls. I know not all of it has to do with guys, but let’s be honest: guys are a major reason girls are nasty to each other. “Is that girl trying to steal my guy?” “Does the guy I like like that girl better?” “Who does that girl think she is?” Sara, believe me when I tell you that no guy is worth getting involved in a big, hairy drama. There are literally millions of boys out there, and the world would be a much nicer place if more girls said, “Next!” the minute they got a hint that a guy was interested in someone else. Because that says something about him, not the other girl. Instead of tormenting her, concentrate on finding a better guy. They’re out there (and guess what . . . you’re going to marry one).
That girl you make fun of? She’s the cool one at cocktail parties. You know how you dream about getting out of Kansas and being a sophisticated adult? Well, when you start going to real parties—the kind where they don’t drink beer out of plastic cups—you’ll be surprised to see who everybody wants to talk with. It’s that girl you called a freak—the one who dresses weird and listens to music you don’t like. She and her friends are into stuff like art and drama, which you’re into, too, but you downplay because the people you’re friends with think it’s stupid and you don’t want to be called a freak as well. Here’s the thing, though: what makes those girls weird now will make them fascinating in a few years. They’ll have the great stories, the awesome style, and you’ll be scrambling to be more like them. So quit making fun, stop worrying what other people think, and start being more fascinating yourself.
Those girls who make fun of you? They might end up unhappy—or they might not. This is what you tell yourself when the in-crowd crap gets to you: they’d better enjoy it now because they’re going to wind up unfulfilled nobodies who never left high school. In some cases that’s true. From what I’ve been able to tell, some of your former classmates do appear to be stuck in senior year. Others, though, will grow up to be super fabulous. The truth is that mean kids can turn into successful (sometimes still mean) adults. They’ll be your neighbors, your coworkers—maybe even your bosses. So learn to get along with them now. Practice being diplomatic but not underhanded, honest but not catty, friendly yet smart and guarded. You don’t have to be fake—if someone’s not a good friend, then nothing you can do will change that. But hiding isn’t an option, and neither is being mean back.
Because being mean? That’s called bullying. You’re lucky; you’ve never been tormented or threatened on a regular basis. But the infighting, the bitchy remarks, the little ways that girls can cut one another down? That’s bullying, too. And you’ve done it just as often as you’ve had it done to you. You might not have realized it at first. It can be so subtle, so easy, and sometimes it feels so good to be the one who’s got the gossip, the one who’s on the inside, the one who is not being laughed at or left out. But if you know you’re hurting someone, then it’s bullying. And the damage doesn’t go away. It will come back in ways you can’t possibly imagine now. But I’m going to help you imagine it because . . .
Your daughter is counting on you. This is it—the one thing I would never change and yet would alter the world for. I won’t give details because I don’t want to take a chance that, by knowing too much, you might somehow do something that could cause you not to have her. All I will tell you is that your little girl is more wonderful than you could ever imagine and that you will be proud of her in a million different ways each and every day of her life.
And it will break your heart.
Because a child blossoms so gradually and intimately that you come to know every expression and emotion as if it were your own. And just when you’re watching her step into the world, full of the self-loving confidence that every person deserves to feel, you’ll watch her meet the brick wall of a bully. Someone will say, “I don’t like you.” Or they’ll run away or gather up other kids against her. You’ll recognize immediately what’s going on; she won’t. She’ll try again. She’ll be shocked, stung, and then you’ll see it start to sink in.
Playground politics will morph into parties she’s not invited to; groups she’s included in one day, then excluded from the next; critiques of her clothes, her hair, her body. You’ll see her build up the defenses that you recognize so well and you’ll think, How dare they do this to her? Then you’ll remember all the times you judged someone. The times you froze another girl out. And you will pray that she never experiences what you did, but you know she will, and you’ll know you can’t save her from it.
I’m telling you this knowing it may be impossible for you to understand. You’re nowhere near ready to imagine what it’s like to be a mother. But what if you do think about it? What if some small shift in you causes a shift in someone else? Could that echo twenty years into the future?
It’s a chance I want to take, for our little girl.
So I’m signing off and sending this letter. And then I’ll wait and watch. Will she become more confident? Will I know better how to help her? Will I even remember that I contacted you, because, when I wake up tomorrow, she and I will have changed in such a way that what happened today no longer exists? You’re a good person; so are your friends—and things get complicated, I know. But what I hope, with all my heart, is that you’ll look to the future now, so you won’t regret the past later.
Good luck, Sara. Enjoy what’s to come. (And try harder in math—trust me on this!)
With much love,
Sara
Bully on the Ledge
by Kurtis Scaletta
I was the new kid seven times between first and twelfth grades. In every year but one, I was the smallest boy in my class. Not only was I smart, I was a smart-ass. I made fun of other kids when they used words wrong or got their facts mixed up. I made fun of the teacher when she used words wrong or got her facts mixed up.
I read from big, thick books. They were nothing special, but they looked show-off-y to other kids. They’d say I was faking and make me read passages from them to prove I could. Then they would say I was making it up anyway. In fourth grade, I read The Shining. It was pretty accessible and had a child hero I could identify with. Some other boys made me read a page, and there was a bad word on it. They ran to the teacher and told her I’d said a swear word. She took the book away from me.
Kids would say my name in a mean way as they rode by me on their bikes. “Scaletta!” they would say, like it was a bad word. They’d take things from me and hold them out of reach. They’d ask me if I was going to cry, and sometimes I did.
I was almost always the last one picked for sports teams, but I understood—I was small and ineffective. Once the kid who passed on me apologized later. It was a sign of real respect, and of slowly realized social acceptance. When I got glasses, some kids tossed them back and forth over my head. When someone finally threw them back to me and I dropped them, and they broke, he was genuinely sorry.
Over time those kids would become at least casual friends. It turned out I was fast for a short distance, and other kids would want to race me. I knew a lot of jokes. Most important, I was a red-blooded, straight, white, Christian, able-bodied and able-minded male. While I was different, I was still “one of them.” I occupied a space of marginal acceptability, like a small wolf from a different pack, but eventually I made my way into the hierarchy. There were lesser wolves than me, and there was prey.
Only one kid did have an especially intense hatred for me. That came in middle school. He put mean notes in my coat, calling me a racist name. I wasn’t black, but I had curly hair, and that was all he needed. I expect he would have rather had a real minority to harass, but our class didn’t have any that year. He challenged me to fights
after school. He finally forced me to, and I won, thanks to guile and a patch of ice. I got him backed helplessly against the ledge of a window well, scooped up his legs, and threatened to let go. He cried and begged other kids to help. None of them did. I helped him back to safety, supposing my mercy would give way to a robust new friendship. It didn’t, and no wonder. I’d humiliated him, not just because he lost, but because not one kid would team up against a weakling to help him. Now he’s the sort of guy who goes to political rallies with misspelled signs.
I’m not ashamed of having been bullied. A few hardships made me. I’m more liberal-minded because of them and more inclined to side with the underdog.
My shame is having ever joined in the abuse. I realized once there was a kid who, though taller than me, could be rabbit punched and tweaked without fighting back. Another time I made a racist joke in the locker room and, during the same spell, told an anti-Semitic joke on the bus, loud enough for the sole Jewish kid to hear. There was the time I joined in a round of teasing of a friend when we discovered he suffered from a weird, mostly harmless but embarrassing medical problem. And the time I abandoned a new friend because nobody else liked her. There were a dozen times that I faked a smile while my not-quite-friends savaged an overweight girl, and a hundred times I tuned out their derision for the kid everyone suspected was gay. I felt powerless to make a difference, anyway, and would rather be on the side that was winning. I think about all those incidents all the time. They’re the ones that bother me to look back on—those times that I showed my meanness and cowardice. They also made me who I am today. If I hadn’t been small or smart or the new kid—or even if I’d been only two of those three—I might have had a thousand such moments, and they’d have made me into a different man. I’d be less thoughtful, less inclined to side with victims. I might not be as literate. I’d be the one taking misspelled signs to political rallies.
Everything you do as a kid adds up to who you are as an adult. Your experiences and decisions are a column of red and black numbers. If you want to be the grown-up you can be proud of, take the hard times in good humor. Make the hard times of others softer. Pull the bully back from the ledge.
Informed Consent
by Lara Zeises
September 13, 1990
I don’t want this. I don’t want people picking on me & I don’t want to be fat . . . I just want to be me.
Here’s one of my earliest memories: I was standing in my grandparents’ bedroom, in front of the full-length mirror that hung on their closet door, looking at my naked body. I was supposed to be trying on clothes they’d gotten me, but instead I was pinching my stomach and crying. I thought, Why do I have to be so fat?
I was four years old.
The worst part? I wasn’t even fat (yet). Chunky, maybe. Chubby at best.
That didn’t make a lick of difference to Tony*, the classmate from kindergarten who insisted on teasing me. Every. Single. Day. I wasn’t Tony’s only target; he was pretty much an equal-opportunity offender. Nor was he the only school-yard bully I’d have to deal with between kindergarten and my high school graduation. But to this day, I remember his face with crystal precision. And to this day, I still want to slap the shit-eating grin off his smug little mug.
It’s no secret that fat kids attract some of the worst bullies. Probably because hating on fatties is one of the last socially acceptable forms of prejudice. Even today, when more than 50 percent of Americans are classified as obese, it’s still considered basically okay to make fun of a kid who shops in the plus-size department. Fat people are fat because they eat too much. Fat people are fat because they don’t get enough exercise. Fat people are fat because . . . well, does it even matter? Fat is bad, thin is good, and if you’re the former instead of the latter, then it’s probably your own fault.
This was what I thought for most of my young adult life. That I was fat because I didn’t have any willpower. That I was fat because I was lazy. This was what I was told by . . . well, by everybody. So I believed it. Mostly.
Throughout middle and high school, there were a lot of people who made fun of me because of my weight. But there are two I’ll never, ever forget: Alex and Henry Short.
The Short brothers were not, in fact, short. Henry was super tall and super skinny. His brother, Alex, was of average height and kind of stocky in an athletic sort of way. I tried to stay as far off their radar as possible, but we went to the same small private school, and there were less than thirty-five students in our entire grade. If the Short brothers wanted to make your life hell, there wasn’t a whole lot you could do about it.
I spent the first two years of high school trying to pretend that their constant taunts didn’t hurt me. They liked to refer to me as the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man—as in the super-huge, sugar-spun “villain” of the movie Ghostbusters. They’d make booming noises whenever I walked. If their comments about my weight weren’t riling me up enough, they’d start in on my clothes, my glasses, my hair.
The summer after my sophomore year, I transferred to a large public school and, thankfully, never had to deal with the Short brothers again. But I never forgot about them. And I certainly never forgave them.
Then, one recent night, through the magic portal that is Facebook, I actually found Alex Short. The Alex Short. And me being me, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to send him a message. It went something like, Hi, you and your douche bag brother were really mean to me, and now I’m a successful author and you’re not. If I’m going to be completely honest, my message was a whole lot nastier, but that’s not entirely relevant. Because here’s the thing:
Alex Short didn’t remember me.
At first, I didn’t believe him. I wrote back, expanding on all of the terrible names I remembered him and Henry calling me. Alex apologized. I didn’t buy that apology, so I wrote him again, laying into him even harder. Finally, he responded:
I feel even more like an absolute douche bag for not remembering [because] taunting someone like you say we [did] is WRONG! I have done some screwed up things in my life and karma has seen to it that I get paid back. I DO apologize and wish you the best in life. I again congratulate you on your success. It is good to see you take the negative and change it to a positive. You should be commended over and over! Again, good luck!
I. Was. Speechless.
I was also quite embarrassed. I mean, here I was, spewing out some ugly, hateful words to a boy I hadn’t even seen in more than fifteen years. And there he was, offering what ultimately seemed like a sincere apology for some stupid things he said when he was a mere teenager. Things he didn’t remember saying to a girl he didn’t remember. Period.
How is it possible that I had every detail of our biology classroom burned into my brain, down to which desk I sat in as he and Henry sang out, “Who you gonna call?” over and over and over again, but Alex Short didn’t so much as remember my name? How? Seriously, how?
I don’t know how. I really don’t.
But here’s the thing: in the end, it doesn’t really matter.
Kids are mean. Kids are cruel. But the sad truth is, I was my own worst bully.
It’s true. I was the one whose cheeks flushed red whenever the Short brothers serenaded me with the Ghostbusters theme song. I was the one who let their voices get inside my head—who let their voices stay there for so many years, long after I’d fallen out of their collective consciousness.
Adults will tell you that bullies are only as powerful as you let them be. And when you’re a teenager, you’ll think they’re full of shit. I know I did.
But in the end? They’re right, you know. It’s like that quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
So don’t give it to them. After all, there’s a good chance they won’t even remember that you did.
* Names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent.
Silent All These Years
by Alyson Noël
It started the
moment I stepped onto the bus.
The sidelong glances. The not-so-hushed whispers.
“New girl.”
“The one who moved into that house.”
Words directed at the back of my head as I claimed the first available seat. Aware of them leaning over one another, craning their necks, widening their eyes, hoping to see something they could add to the story they were already forming.
Something worth talking about.
I fought to overcome my shyness. Forced myself to look around and smile. Tried to work past the nervous twitch in my belly, to look accommodating and friendly. My efforts were met by curious looks, piercing glares, dissecting stares—causing me to hunker down and retreat, keeping quiet, keeping to myself, staring out the window, praying it soon would be over.
A long, bumpy ride on a bus with bad shocks.
A quick trip to the office and then on to class with a pink slip clutched in my fist.
An awkward introduction in which I was forced to stand before the chalkboard, stand before my new classmates, stating my full name and where I’d moved from, while my gut clenched so badly and my face turned so red, I swung my long brown hair before me, hoping I could somehow hide behind it, pretend I wasn’t really there.
A move I’d soon learn to regret.
A move that haunted me for the next five years.
“Did you see the way she swung her hair?”
“Did you know she lives in that house?”
And by lunch, a group of older girls, girls who were ten to my nine, had taken it upon themselves to rename me.
No longer Alyson.
Dear Bully Page 12