Bigfoot crying in the field.
When you and your BFF are friends, life is magic. Everything is more fun when she’s there; long trail rides in the woods, midnight movies, and sneaking out to swim in the canals late at night.
Then it all ends.
You’ll wake up one morning and for no reason you can discern, you’ll be on the outside looking in. You’re the one afraid to get on the bus. Afraid of the walk home. Afraid of going out riding. Afraid to answer the phone. Afraid, afraid, afraid. But avoiding them doesn’t help. She and the others ride up to your house on their horses and call you out. Taunting you, threatening you.
The first time she turned on you was because you suggested having a club like in Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Suddenly, you’re the girl who wanted a club about periods (as she announced to the whole bus, boys and all). Humiliation was her weapon of choice, and if that didn’t work, she would have someone dump perfume on the unlucky victim on her way to school. She rarely did her own dirty work.
During the BFF times, you’re by her side as she intimidates others. You just go along. So does everyone else. You keep your mouth shut; you close your eyes and you pretend it’s not happening. Maybe if you pretend hard enough it won’t be true. But it always is and their pain and humiliation only illustrates how you do not want to be in their shoes again. Ever.
So you take the coward’s way out. Live in fear. And wait for your turn at the whipping post.
Bigfoot crying in the field.
Now, as an adult, you wish you could go back and change it all. You see yourself strong, as strong as you are now. You see yourself standing up for Matt and Dina and Michelle and Stewart. And Bigfoot. Especially Bigfoot. You want to wipe away the tears and the confusion and the hurt of that sixteen-year-old boy. And you want to tell him you’re sorry. Sorry that you left him there, crying in the field.
But you can’t change anything and the memory of leaving that man/child broken by the tractor will hurt you forever. But you survived. And all you can do is share your strength with others, with teens who have been bullied or who are afraid to do anything about those who bully. And you try and you try and you hope that you’re helping, but behind it all you can still see him.
Bigfoot crying in the field.
When I Was a Bully, Too
by Melissa Walker
When I was in seventh grade, I was nervous all the time. Every day that I went into school to meet my friends in the hallway, I wondered if this was a day that they’d turn on me, a day when I’d get teased and made fun of. Or if it was someone else’s day to take the hit.
There was one girl in our tight-knit group of four, Eliza*, who led the charge—always. It would start with a little comment: “Nice shirt, Mel.” And then Leigh and Ariel would join in—“Yeah, nice shirt. Did you get that at the thrift shop?” It didn’t matter if I’d spent an hour trying to figure out what to wear that wouldn’t attract attention, that would fit in, that would keep them from singling me out.
I have to admit that I was relieved when it wasn’t me who got picked on. Leigh and Ariel took the brunt of Eliza’s seemingly random insults, too. There was no way to deflect them—we all ganged up on whoever was chosen for sacrifice that day.
Until one night, when Eliza was home sick and Leigh, Ariel, and I went to a junior high dance together. We gathered in the corner of the gym, and Leigh said, “Eliza’s kind of pissing me off lately.” She said it tentatively, like she wasn’t sure if we’d agree. But both Ariel and I nodded and smiled. That night, the three of us formulated a plan.
The plan wasn’t complicated, it wasn’t nuanced, it had very few steps. The plan was: Let’s stop talking to Eliza. Just ignore her. Do that thing where you say, “Do you hear a fly buzzing around?” whenever she talks.
And we did. We shut her out in the hallway before the morning bell, we turned our backs to her at lunch, we didn’t wait for her between classes. It was brutal.
When she cornered me alone at my locker and demanded to know what was going on, I ignored her, as I’d pledged to Ariel and Leigh that I’d do. I walked down the hallway quickly as Eliza followed me, and I heard her start to cry.
Eliza and I used to talk every day on the phone after school. But when she called that day, sobbing and wanting to know what she’d done, I hung up on her.
After that she left us alone. It took one day to end what felt like a lifetime of tyranny (really, it was about a year). But it left me feeling empty, cold, like I didn’t have a circle of friends anymore.
I stayed friends with Ariel and Leigh, but we all went into our separate groups in high school. Eliza and I said “Hi” in the halls, but we were never close again.
This summer, a mutual friend of mine and Eliza’s commented on a photo Eliza had posted on Facebook, so it showed up in my feed. I clicked through to see a little girl with Eliza’s smile, maybe two years old—her daughter.
I remembered playing Nintendo at Eliza’s house, making up hilarious dances in her living room, filming a movie in sixth grade where we dressed up in her mom’s clothes and delivered soap opera–quality lines. I remembered how she could say and do things that would make me giggle until I’d end up lying on the ground, doubled over in laughter.
And here is what I wished: I wished that Eliza had been kinder, yes, not such a bully. But I also wish that Ariel and Leigh and I had made a different plan that night. One where we told Eliza that she was mean a lot of the time, made it clear to her that we wouldn’t gang up on one another for entertainment. And then, the next time she said something barbed like, “Nice shirt, Mel,” Ariel and Leigh would have said, “It is nice. Where’d you get it?” and the situation would have been diffused.
The problem was that we were all too scared to be the one who stood up for the first time. So we avoided Eliza’s wrath by shutting her out completely.
Bullies have foot soldiers. And those people can turn into bullies themselves, like we did against Eliza. But they don’t have to. They can make better, if harder, choices. And I wish I had.
* All names have been changed because these girls? They’ll totally recognize themselves.
Carol
by Amy goldman Koss
I held power briefly in sixth grade. I didn’t hold ultimate, unquestionable power, and I didn’t rule alone, but still, my power was nothing to scoff at. One of the perks of being in the ruling class at Greenfield Elementary was that I had a Carol.
Here’s where I’d tell you about Carol if I knew anything, but I didn’t know where she lived or if she had brothers or sisters or any of that. I knew only that if I got right up in her face and accused her of terrible things, and said mean, horrible things about her, every part of her froze—except for her eyes. Her eyes got wide and panicky and darted around as if she was looking for an escape. But she didn’t escape, she just stood there until I was done and released her. I imagine it didn’t make Carol feel so great, but it made me feel terrific!
I can’t tell you why I picked Carol because I don’t know. Maybe I was like a hungry lion chasing the herd of elk, looking for the easiest one to separate and take down. Or maybe it was because she was unprotected. I assume that if she hadn’t been alone I would have chosen someone who was. I was a bully but not quite powerful enough to take on more than one victim. Maybe Carol hadn’t been alone to start with, but whatever friends she’d had abandoned her in fear and self-preservation when they saw that she had been selected as my prey.