Kidney Beans, Pink Ties And One Big Can Of Whoop-Ass.

I don't remember much of what she said after she whirled around and shouted at the three or four of us, a few paces behind her and her two siblings.

"WHY DON'T YOU JUST LEAVE HIM ALONE?!" is all I really remember her saying verbatim.

Seared into my memory, though, is the expression on her face--rattling fury mixed with broken-glass-sharp contempt.  I remember how pale her blond eyebrows looked against the crimson of her complexion and how the breeze caught some of the strands of her long, straight hair, sending them swirling around her head, as if she was electrified.

***

I am and have always been known to be a Fuck-With.  A Ball-Buster.  Cage-Rattler.  Whatever you want to call it.  I'll give you an example.  One day, when I was in high school, a popular kid wore a pink tie.  A Pink Tie.  It was the absolute height of Preppy TragiComedy and I rode his ass so hard about it, that he took it off in World History class and walked up the aisle to throw it at me.  He was laughing, though, and I put it on and wore it for the rest of the day (with my black nail polish and my braided side-tail. TFS!)

Sometimes I would tease a little and sometimes a lot.  It was humorous.  It was a way of relating.  It was my natural inclination.  I learned through the years that it was also a defense mechanism. It allowed me to connect without feeling too emotionally vulnerable.  To make others laugh was (and still is) one of the things that I do best and teasing others, picking up and playing with the little stuff that irked them a bit was one way to do that. 

My teasing was never, ever, meant to hurt anyone.  My aim was never to humiliate or embarrass someone in public or to demean them or make them feel less than. 

The funny thing about aim, though, is that even if you're really true most of the time,  you can still totally miss.

***

After my third grade year, the public school which I attended was closed.  My fourth grade year dawned with me clad in a plaid jumper with navy blue knee socks.  I remember being optimistic about the prospect of attending the Catholic school but my hopes were cast aside  like so many kidney beans out of the school lunch chili.  The kids there had been together since the first grade and they weren't taking any new customers. 

I was awkward, a horrible combination of deep, scratchy voice, false bravado, questionable hygiene and bad, bad hair.  I cried every single day before school, manifesting stomach aches and headaches that sent me complaining to the nurse.  There was one other girl from former school and when I reached out to her--a continuation of the congenial relationship that we'd had only a few months back and a few blocks away, she turned on me and pretended we didn't know each other.

I was excluded but I was never picked on.  I imagine that my acerbic wit and my speedy-if-somewhat-caustic comebacks may have been a part of what made me immune from the grisly treatment that two of my classmates received for the four years I attended that school.  I still had my neighborhood friends, who also attended the Catholic school.  They were all older than me and so even though we didn't see each other during the school day, we walked home together. 

It was during this same year that we would walk home behind the redheaded boy.  I don't recall his name.  I had a vague idea of where he lived but to this day I can't say I knew him.  I don't remember what we used to say to him.  I only remember that we used to walk behind him and tease him.  And tease him.  And tease him.  I don't remember him crying or yelling or doing anything in particular.  In fact, I don't remember any real response at all until that day his sister whirled around and opened up a can of whoop-ass on us all.

We stopped short, all of us, when she spun around, dirt and small stones crunching under her heels.

"WHY DON'T YOU JUST LEAVE HIM ALONE?!" she screamed. 

There was more but the details are lost to me all these years later.  The gist was basically, 'Who do you think you are?' and it was only a matter of seconds before she spun again and stalked away, siblings in tow.

It was as if she'd doused me with a giant bucket of ice water, that's how shocked I was.  I stood, stunned silent.  I was surprised by the intensity of her emotion on his behalf and that what I experienced as a little post-school fun, he must have experienced as long-suffered torment.  To have my perception changed so rapidly like that--it caused a kind of emotional vertigo.

We resumed walking and my friends were whispering, keeping voices low in that Oh-Holy-Shit-What-Was-THAT? tone.  The boiling hot shame flooded me--filled me right up past my vocal chords--and threatened to spill over and out.  I was overcome with emotion and I had nothing to add to their conversation because even then I knew.  I knew she was right.

A few days later, I approached the redheaded boy and his sister.  I apologized for the teasing and told him that I would stop.  And I did.  Was I a bully?  I don't know.  I don't think so, not in the classic sense.  But I was definitely a Fuck-With in a bit of an emotional crisis, blowing off steam in an inappropriate way.

There was relief in giving a sincere apology and having it accepted.  And in doing better.  There was a giant lesson in the experience for me--an opportunity to reflect on my own behavior.  An opportunity to gauge the effect that my behavior had on others, regardless of my benign intent. 

 I don't know if an adult's intervention would have had the same effect on me.  It may have. 

But I still remember her face. Clearly.

The fury, the broken glass contempt.

The electrified, swirling, platinum strands of silk.

Comments

[slouchy]

Huh. I thought I commented on this.

It's breathtaking.

[Kelly]

I remember the few times I dispensed cruelty as a young kid. There were very few times, but they exist nonetheless. I was able to apologize to one girl, about 5 years later, when we were stuck together in driver's ed one day. Nothing like being smooshed in the backseat with someone you'd felt horrendously guilty about being horrible to years before. I said sorry, repeated my crime, and she appeared to nonchalantly forgive me.

They were isolated times. I was generally a very good, nice kid. But yes, there exist assholic stains on my soul.

You said sorry too. That separates you from a bully. For sure.

[mom-101]

What incredible honesty. Wow.

Yes you were a bully. But you changed when you realized that's who you were. That's amazing actually. If only all bullies got it quite so fast.

Or maybe some of us just have to yell "stop it" louder, sooner.

[Amanda]

The capacity to learn and adjust, that is true character.

xo

[Forgotten]

From the time I started school until the time I graduated, I was picked on. I was short. I was small. I was painfully shy. I was a very-late bloomer (after graduation kind of late). I was the oldest in my family so I didn't have any siblings who went before me to pave an easier path for me to walk behind.

I was also a vicious protector of my little brothers. Both of them. I slammed a boy's head off of a school bus window 4 times VERY hard for teasing my little brother because I had been so mercilessly tortured myself that I refused to let him suffer as I did every day. I was known amongst the younger grades as that girl who beat up somebody for picking on her brother. My brother was not picked on again after that. He had so many friends that it was ridiculous and so few people who truly didn't like him. When he died in a car accident at 20 years old, the receiving line at his viewing stretched for hours. We hugged so many of his friends that I ran out of tears.

I will teach my children the power of their words and their actions. You always have to think of the impact you are having on others before you act. It's a lesson I learned the hard way. I'm glad you didn't learn it as I did. I'm glad that it's stuck with you so that you can teach it to your children the easy way. :)

[marty]

I totally identify with the caustic wit keeping the mean girls at bay.

This is fabulous. Really - one of my favorites of yours.

[The Domestic Goddess]

I honestly don't think most kids know what they are doing. They don't realize the pain because either it doesn't happen to them or they don't know how it feels. Once they know how it feels, though, Ouchy. SUCKY. I know this because i was a teaser but totalyl oblivious until seventh grade when all of the other girls were developing and i still looked like a six year old. Bore that for about five years. It sucked.

[a]

When people say kids are mean, it's only because they are. They don't intend to be, but they generally have to learn this lesson.

I feel fortunate to have realized when I was about 16 what a jerk I was to a girl in our elementary school. And when I saw her on the bus one day, I apologized to her. She was very gracious about it, but I still feel like a jerk. And my witty, witty comments in high school and college - well, I'm surprised I had any friends at all.

[L.]

I really liked this post...you are a very good writer.

[Air Force Ones]

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today

[Manic Mommy]

So you were nine or ten? You did something wrong and you learned from it. I think that's the way it supposed to happen. Some kids are naturally more empathetic, some aren't, and some are in pain and acting out.

I think what we see now is more insidious, malice it seems is at the forefront of the true bullies' personalities.

I also think that to some, it's a catch phrase, a disease du jour/ cause celeb. Like ADHD and Autism before it.

[Issa]

I do. I understand. Promise.

I think there is a big difference between bullying and teasing. Sometimes the two merge without us really meaning it to happen. I don't think you were a bully.

This is what I meant in Kristen's post though. I see both sides of it. I think that in a way, we are all right. You, me, Kristen, Amy and Julie. All of us have made really good points.

[The New Girl]

Issa: I so know what you mean. I didn't have Malice, per se, but the point being...he was in pain and I had caused it. Even though I could make fun at another's expense, I never meant for the cost to be significant, if you know what I'm saying. That lesson stuck and helped shape my burgeoning Empathy, I think.

The absence of Malice is what I think separates 'bullying' from 'Bullying,' if you know what I'm saying.

[anymommy]

In addition to being an incredibly touching story, this is so well written. Thank you for sharing it.

[Julie @ The Mom Slant]

You were brave then to apologize, and you are brave now to share.

[Issa]

You stopped. You even apologized. That? Is what is important. Truly.

I use humor too. I am funny. I am sarcastic. Witty. I am the queeen of the great one liners. Part of it is my personality, part of it is a defense mechanism. I know this. I accept this. It's me. In most ways, I don't think there is anything wrong with it.

I'll tell you something...the girls who bullied me? They knew they were doing it. They were asked to stop over and over again for 7 months straight. That is different. They were intentionally cruel and semi-violent.

However? There were things that I look back on now, things that I said or did throughout my childhood, that I wonder, was I a bully in that situation. I don't have an answer for it.