Bully for you!

When I was a child, well let me be more specific. When I was between the ages of eight and eleven I was a real douche. I still have the ability to be douchey, but I will never be able to outdo the doucheness that I was back then. This morning while I was lying in bed, very much awake next to a snoring Steve I found myself reflecting on this part of my life and feeling a guilt more powerful than the guilt  I reserve for being childless in my 30's.

Back in 1988 I had a bowl haircut and an overbite. I could put a pencil between my front two teeth and my mother dressed me like a toddler well into adolescence. I was the perfect target for bullying, yet I can't recall a time at school where I ever felt truly persecuted. Not like some of the stories you read about today. I thank the clouds regularly that I was spared the prepubescent cruelty that plagues Bebo and Facebook and has caused awkward kids like me to cut and to kill themselves.

Back before computers, the only way to bully someone was in the flesh. I was called names like 'meatloaf' (a clever play on my surname) and was teased for being a boy on the daily, but then I was also the little androgynous madame who wold slap the glasses clean off your face for doing so. I was never afraid to get physical. I would grab you by your arms and spin you round and round until you were having fun and then I'd let you go and watch you fly across the playground and land in the dirt. 'Call me a boy one more time' I'd think to myself as I displayed my bottom lip to my victim in mock sadness.

Assaulting those who pick on you is definitely the wrong answer. I know that now. And if you are reading this and you are Shaun or Stan, I'm sorry. But the thing that I will never understand about child-me is that in addition to slapping and throwing people across the playground. I used to punch my friends. Well actually just one friend, really. Why? Who the hell knows, but I did it.

Poor Sadie, wherever you are, you are probably traumatized by our friendship the way that I am haunted by it. I really, really loved Sadie. We were best friends and the other girls at school were mean to her because they once saw her pick her nose and eat it. Who cares? Not me. Like I said, I loved Sadie and I couldn't ever figure out how to show her, so sometimes I would become so full of love and admiration for her that I'd punch her in the arm. Hard. Why? Fuck knows, but I used to do it from time to time and I think about it now and feel very bad about it and wonder just what the actual hell was wrong with me. What couldn't I just hug her?

Many years after Sadie and I were friends, I saw her again when I was waiting tables at Cheddar's. She came in with her whole family and she looked so beautiful. We chatted as I brought and cleared plates and refills of fizzy drinks and when she left she hugged me. She didn't flinch as she came towards me, so that's a good sign! But still I would have liked to apologize and I never did. 

I am not longer friends with Sadie, and though I've tried to find her on Facebook, I've been unsuccessful. I hope this is because she's married somewhere with everything she wants and is insanely happy. I hope she doesn't think about me and my little hands punching her very often and I hope that wherever she is, no one is hurting her.

Luckily I outgrew this mean streak and by the time I hit middle school I basically pooped rainbows and was friends with everyone and never hit anyone ever again (except the time all those girls beat me up, but I don't think my fist actually connected with anything that whole time), but I did shove a piece of cake in someone's face a la The Three Stooges, and for that I will always feel remorse.

It was a girl I was kind-of friends with as well. A girl who wasn't having an easy time and was a very easy target. I was given, as a dare, the grizzly assignment of smashing a piece of cake in this poor girl's face. In front of the whole school. And I did it. This is the time when my friends list on Facebook drops dramatically and I totally accept that.

What a terrible thing to do to someone. Looking back I should have said 'fuck your dare!' And possibly smashed some cake in their face, but I didn't. I relented to what my father calls 'peer pressure' *cringe* and did something terrible to another human being. and for this I am terribly ashamed. I do still know her and I have apologized, but when I did I could tell that memory, though 13 years old at the time, was very fresh for her. It was like she'd dressed a bullet wound with tissue paper and I'd just stuffed my finger in it. I did a very bad thing. 

I suppose I'm writing this as a kind of catharsis. I used to be a dick and I've seen some kids be dicks to each other recently and I look on with my judgmental, knowing eye as their parents shrug and say things like 'they're just kids.' That is most definitely true, but what they do as kids will stay with them and affect them as they grow. Look at me! Stewing on a Sunday morning about deeds I committed before even hitting double digits!

Mean shouldn't be tolerated or even encouraged just because it's being employed by the young. That's when it should be spoken about and discouraged. Kids often can't control themselves, but by insisting that they don't need to, and excusing bad behavior, we are potentially making their lives and their Sunday mornings harder later on.