It seems that more and more people are coming forward with stories about being bullied in school, even the bullies themselves! Hesitating to participate in a mass movement that, lemming-like, doesn't accomplish much more than a communal purging, I nevertheless would tell my story of abuse.
My father was an ambitious man, and he was promoted over and over during his career. This resulted in my family moving many times in my childhood, sometimes staying in any one place only for a matter of months. We moved up and down the East Coast, and even overseas.
I was a quiet and bookish child, believe it or not, and made friends slowly and seldom simply because I never knew when we might move again. My classmates in the various schools I attended treated me as the outsider I was. My rapidly deteriorating eyesight made things worse, as I couldn't make up for my lack of social experience by any athletic skills.
Teachers in those days didn't know how to bring newcomers into the closed world of an elementary school. I can remember vividly one time when the class was to copy a picture from one of our classbooks. The teacher gathered these drawings and put them up for all the class to critique (presumably some sort of art lesson.) I am no artist, to be sure, but it quickly became obvious who was the class goat. As the teacher stood by, student after student picked out my picture- and mine alone!- to point out flaws.
Not until high school did I begin to fight back, futilely and franticly. Of course, I was disciplined when I reacted to the whispered teasing from the kid behind me in class by overturning his desk. Of course, I showed up at parties I thought I had been invited to only to find no party there. And we will not be distracted by talking about the young women who ignored me, denied any offer of a date, even plotted with my classmates to make me look ridiculous in public.
Two things saved me, and they are strangely linked: my faith and my acting. In my home church I found the acceptance I found nowhere else. And it was also there that I discovered an ability to act on stage, to transform into someone else.
That does not means the teasing, the nasty words, the rejection stopped. It took years before I came to terms with who I am, regardless of what others thought or said.
But it did leave me with this: because of all the hurts I have suffered, I can recognize and empathize with the hurts of others. Not that I would recommend that path to such a goal; As Mark Twain reported when he interviewed a man who had been tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail: "If it weren't for the honor, I'd just as soon have walked."
Ray
ReplyDelete