Throughout my life I have lived in many different homes and met many different people. I’ve moved 19 times! (by 2018) That might not seem like a lot until you do the math; what the math shows is that 19 times, is once a year every year I’ve been alive at this point (2019). The longest I’ve stayed in the same home is 3 years and the shortest I’ve stayed was two weeks. And well, you get the idea. I’ve never managed to fit in, a lone wolf hopping from place to place in a manner of speaking, usually never by choice. At all the schools I ever attended, people would often avoid me past the first day introductions. It wasn’t usually out of cruelty or lack of kindness, but simply a lack of familiarity that kept others from getting to know me. To be fair to them, my unstable moving life hasn’t afforded me the opportunity to make many long term relationships or good friendships. I wouldn’t know the first thing about being a good friend if I’m honest. But back then, none of this bothered me, back then. I was used to being alone, odd and ignored. I was an optimistic, gullible child. I had a heart too big to notice the lack of love or kindness, or attention others might take for granted on a bad day. Kids don’t notice the trauma of neglect till they have to face their lack as an adult, but I’m losing the plot now…
It was probably, for this reason, I couldn’t stand seeing others get hurt. When people hurt me, it didn’t matter, but if I saw others getting hurt, then suddenly, it did! Perhaps unconsciously I could relate to the pain. It hurt more to see it happening to others than it hurt to feel it in the back of my child soul. I remember the first bully I ever dealt with. The first in a line of many that I would meet and face, living in one house of many and going to one of many schools, this is that story.
I was living in what was a small town at the time, Battle Mountain, Nevada. I was in the first grade. I remember being on the playground like I had been so many afternoons before that watching other kids run around, kicking wood chips up as they went and playing tag. I was drawing on the hot black assault with a piece of chalk. I looked up at the sound of a particular commotion. I watched a 5th grader as he aggressively pushed a smaller, younger student off the swing set. The girl whose knees were now scratched and bruised from the fall ran off crying as the bully laughed.
Now, this boy was in the 5th grade and I’m not sure why all of the grades went out at the same time for recess or why the school thought it was fine to mix all the grades together for recess with no separate playground or anything for the younger grades. But something must be said about this school in particular. Everything about it was small, the hallways, classrooms, office, the number of students, and the playground. Every class had 2 to 3 teachers with a total of 20 to 30 students per class at most. I’m being generous because I’m almost certain the kindergarten class had 15 kids at most and 3 teachers at least on any given day. I figured I should be generous about how many kids there could have actually been, despite my memory, to make up for the negligence of some of the adults who were supposed to be watching out for this sort of bullying on the playground.
So you see it’s really inexcusable that 1/3rd of the teachers were recess aids during recess and not one of them seemed to care or notice this kid’s daily, regular behavior. I had tried to report on him to the recess aids in the past. Which rewarded me with the nickname “TattleTaylor,” something that one of the recess aids themselves came up with on my second attempt to inform the adults about the bad kid’s actions. This 5th grade bully convinced the supervising adults that he was a sweetheart and they chose to believe the older children more than the younger ones, because it was convenient. It’s easier to listen to a lie if believing a lie means less work on your part. So it made sense that they never believed me or any of the younger kids about how we got hurt or pushed around. “Kids exaggerate.” The injustice was getting to me.
Today I knew what I was going to do. I brushed myself off with one hand as I got up. I casually strolled over to the swings. Above me. I tugged softly on his shirt to get his attention. When he turned around to look at me I gave him this warning. “You need to stop, or else.” In that amount of time he had already pushed more kids off the swings and was asserting his authority over who could and couldn’t swing on the set so I felt reaffirmed with every action.
I remember saying the words with a calm, patient cadence. He smirked and chuckled as he responded, bending down to my level, “What are you going to do about it, tell on me?” I remember his hands gesturing towards a recess aid within sight mocking me as he spoke. “They’re not going to believe you. Cause as soon as you go over there I’m going to cry and when she comes over here I’m going to say that you were being mean to me.” He wasn’t wrong about the fact the aids would believe him over me and I knew from experience that he wasn’t lying about what he was planning on doing. So many recess days had gone by with no consequences for his actions, no change to his routine, no empathetic growth in his behavior. What’s worse is he always got away with it…Not today.
So here we were, on a school playground on a hot day. He was staring me down, leaned in close to my face to give his intimidation more of an edge in an attempt to scare me off.
“I know, you’re right.” I shrugged in a way that made it look like I was turning around to leave. He responded too soon with, “That’s what I thou…..” And BAM! A small puff of chalk appears in the air as my fist hits him square in the nose, knocking him backward to the ground. “Or else then.” I said under my breath. I heard some of the nearby kids laugh, cheer and point. Upon hearing the commotion I caused a few recess aids came over to witness the after product of our conversation. They saw me surrounded by kids cooing and laughing, while one other kid was crying on the ground screaming and whimpering, holding his face as blood oozed out of the cracks of his hands. They scolded me and despite the fact other students tried to back me up this time, they still didn’t believe my story. I heard some kids say, “he deserved it–Told you–how’s it feel to get knocked out by a girl~.” I was holding still, overwhelmed by what I did and how I should feel about it.
One of the kids who had been shoved off the swings before came up to me and said “thank you for standing up to him” just before a teacher grabbed my arm to drag me away. Their point of views were understandably without context to the situation that had occurred. I must have been contemplating this internal struggle of feeling good and feeling nothing because my memory skips to the next part.
I was sent to the office and forced to wait outside while my stepmom talked with the principal. I was mad that I was being punished, but I was proud of myself for giving that kid a piece of his own medicine and for doing what no one else would. I was sorry for making him bleed but I was demanding in my mind that he better not do that ever again or I’ll have to punch harder. I remember sitting on an old wooden bench and thinking to myself, “I’ll do it again if I have to, even if that means I’ll be grounded the rest of my life.”
I remember hearing my stepmom shout something at the principal, I guess their conversation had escalated before leaving the room. She came out looking angry and annoyed. I thought it was towards me taking a deep breath in, but her face quickly softened as she looked at me and she gave me a thumbs up. “Come on, we’re going to get some ice cream.” I remember being confused and helplessly shocked by the response, for it was not the one I was expecting. I knew that violence wasn’t the answer so the fact that I hurt him was wrong but……………… “Am I grounded?” I asked on the way out of the office. She looked down at me as she held my hand in the halls “No, but you’re suspended for a week.” She replied smiling.
I didn’t know what suspended meant back then. She said that being suspended meant that we were going to go get Icecream and I’d help her with groceries and hang out with her for the week. When it happened I thought of it as more of a reward than a punishment. I mean what kid wouldn’t want an excuse to miss school for a week and get ice cream for it. I guess in many ways both the bully and I received our just desserts that day.
When I did end up going back,
there was an assembly on the difference between “tattle telling” and telling an adult the situation. Almost like the school wanted to blame me for the incident rather than take responsibility for their negligence. Apparently, I guess, I punch pretty hard, because it turns out I broke the 5th grader’s nose. Part of the reason my stepmom and the principal were arguing was because they mentioned suing us for damages because of the other parents’ outrage. Although braking his nose wasn’t my intent, I like to believe he learned his lesson and thinks about how if he hurts people he might get hurt in return in the future. There weren’t any more problems concerning him during recess anymore and I made a friend for a time.
The rest of the school year went on as it does and in the summer I went to live with my mom for the coming year where I would be taken back to Utah and forced to be dragged through whatever family obstacle or cultural out-casting awaited me, but those are stories for another time.
hope you enjoyed ~T.C.J