There’s a slogan, “Everything’s bigger in Texas.” I don’t know about that, but it comes to mind when I think about Dallas—the biggest kid in Mrs. Albano’s Fourth Grade class at the Snohomish County Christian School in Edmonds, Washington. He was big, burly and intimidating. He had tree-trunks for arms, a chest the size of a Buick, and his neck was as wide as his head, which sported a high-and-tight haircut like a Marine. Dallas seemed to have disproportionate strength and athletic prowess when the rest of us were still as gangling and unsteady as newborn fawns. Dallas was always picked first for kickball.
He was smart, too; Dallas consistently finished first in timed reading and comprehension exercises, closing his book a full minute before anyone else while still being able to correctly answer all ten-or-so questions about the content. So, Dallas didn’t fit the mold of the archetypal bully. He wasn’t the dumb, slobbering oaf that compensates for his shortcomings by establishing his place at the top of the hierarchy through mere might-makes-right intimidation and persecution. Dallas wasn’t a dullard, but a bully he was all the same.
Like most bullies, Dallas had a sidekick. Pat was tall, but skinny (like me), and he was the suburb to Dallas’s metropolis. Pat revolved around Dallas. While Dallas had that quiet reserve that comes with the confidence of being able to pummel any kid at random, Pat was the twitchy hanger-on that never stopped talking, needed constant reassurance that he and Dallas were friends, and spent every recess stirring up trouble from the safety of Dallas’s enormous shadow.
I, on the other hand, was a quiet kid. I was shy, timid, meek and uncertain. I was a nice guy, but I lacked the confidence and social skills to fit into the popular crowd. I was the kid that got picked next-to-last for dodgeball (thank god I was always picked before Paul Salami-Breath!), the kid who never had to go up and write his name on the chalkboard for being disruptive in class, and the kid who avoided any conflict out of a debilitating fear of getting in trouble. I was the kid that other parents coveted because of my good behavior. On more than one occasion, some friend’s mom would tell me that she wished her son was more like me, causing me to squirm as if I was being disloyal to whichever friend belonged to the mother.
My fear of getting in trouble wasn’t really about the punishment that would be meted out; though, of course, no kid likes the punishment. I grew up with an obsession about being the perfect person. Getting in trouble meant that I’d failed as a human, and the shame of that was worse than punishment.
One time, my friend Curtis and I were helping his dad Dennis set up a room for a meeting at their church, and we got distracted by a baby grand piano in the room. We plunked the keys for a while before Dennis suggested that we stop messing around and start setting up chairs. Curtis got busy with the chairs, but while I’d heard the instructions, I was so mesmerized by the piano that they went in one ear and out the other. I kept banging out notes on the piano until Dennis rested his hand on my shoulder and softly said, “Hey, what did I just say?” I was mortified, and I just knew that I was the worst kid in the world, and that the Campbells would never again invite me over to their house. (I’m happy to report that nearly thirty years later, they’re still inviting me over to their house.)
So, with an allergy to anything that could be construed as bad behavior, I was a perfect candidate for bullying.
Dallas and Pat discovered a new recess pastime: tripping other kids. They would come up behind a guy who was walking or running, time his footsteps, and at just the right moment, kick his trailing foot so that it would catch his weight-bearing foot, causing him to trip on himself and fall down. What was a kid to do but just accept it and run away? No one in his right fucking mind would retaliate against Dallas. Just one menacing make-my-day glare and a flex of his neck muscles were enough to send the other kids skittering away like cockroaches.
And that’s exactly what I did. When Dallas and Pat set their sights on me, they spent every recess (for the entire recess) following me around and tripping me. I’d fall down, get grass stains on my knees and elbows, scrape my hands on the cement, hit my head on the ground, but just get back up and walk quickly away. Then, they’d trip me again. If I saw them coming, I’d run; but they were faster than me, and getting tripped while running was even worse than walking. For a while, there’d been a pretty even spread among classroom victims, but for some reason, once they’d discovered me as a target, they just never tired. For several weeks, I lived in terror at recess time.
The real pain of being bullied isn’t the scrapes and bruises. It isn’t even the embarrassment. The real problem with being bullied is the sense of powerlessness it evokes. I couldn’t run away from Dallas and Pat, because they were faster. I couldn’t tell an authority figure, because no one likes a tattle-tale. And I couldn’t fight them because, a) Dallas was huge, and b) I’d get in trouble for fighting.
One night at the dinner table, my mom asked me about all the grass stains on my clothes. She worked tirelessly to keep my clothes clean and in good condition, but at the same time, it was pretty well understood that I was supposed to avoid making all that extra work for her. So, when she asked, I was afraid of getting in trouble for being so irresponsible with my jeans. I laid out my defense, and told my parents about Dallas and Pat.
We weren’t the type of family that had candid conversations about school, friends, feelings or interests. It had never occurred to me to tell them about the bullying until it was necessary to prevent scolding or punishment. But, the fear of getting in trouble trumped the fear of a bully, so I spilled my guts.
My parents were surprised and concerned. No parent likes to hear that their kid is being hurt. But on my dad’s part, coupled with that genuine sympathy, there was a palpable disappointment that his kid was a little pussy. Not only was I not at all gifted in anything athletic, but now I was just a push-over. My dad wasn’t exactly a man’s man himself, but I’m sure no father ever hopes to have a little bitch for a son.
“Listen,” my dad told me, “I’m not saying fighting is always the right answer, but you have to stick up for yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have to defend yourself. You can’t keep letting that kid push you around.”
“I should fight him?” I asked, incredulously.
Never one to give a straight-forward answer, he said, “Well, I’m just saying that he’ll just keep doing this to you unless you put a stop to it.”
“So, I should fight him?”
“You need to show that kid that you won’t put up with his crap.”
“But, if I get in a fight, I’ll get in trouble!”
“Hey, if you get in trouble for sticking up for yourself, you tell them to call me and I’ll come down there and straighten everything out.”
A kid is subject to three branches of government. God is like the Executive branch, teachers are the Legislative branch, and parents are the Judicial branch. I didn’t know what God would think of me fighting in this kind of situation—turn the other cheek and all that—but I at least had my dad on my side, and should I get in a fight, everything would head straight into bureaucratic deliberation and ultimately be decided by my parents, who were now on my side. And since I was more afraid of reprimand than a bloody nose, I had a new-found confidence when I went to school the next day. I wasn’t looking for trouble, but if trouble came to me, bring it on.
It didn’t take long. At the first recess, I headed out to the grassy field beyond the playground toys. Right on schedule, Dallas and Pat came up behind me, kicked my back foot, and I planted my face in the grass. This was it! This was the moment when I’d take my stand! Dallas had fired the first shots, but I was going to win this war or go down fighting.
“Come on!” I jumped up and got right in Dallas’s big face.
At first, Dallas looked a little surprised. It took him a second to realize what was happening, that he was witnessing a kid snap in real time, that he and his dominion were being challenged by a peon. I’m sure a lion would be less perplexed by mouse shaking his tiny fist at him than Dallas was by me. His surprise turned to puzzlement. And then Dallas remembered that he was the lion in this scenario. I was the mouse.
The expression on his face said, What are you going to do about it? The expression on my face said, I’ll do anything I have to.
We stood nose to nose. I could practically see smoke coming out of his ears, and I had fire in my eyes. We stood motionless, eyes locked, waiting for the other to make the first move like Wild West gunslingers facing off at high noon. And, just like in every schoolhouse drama you’ve ever seen on TV or in the movies, there was an instant crowd of kids surrounding us. It takes less time for every kid on the playground to converge on the scene of a fight than it does for kids to surround a birthday cake at a party.
“Fight! Fight!” they all chanted.
There was no getting out of this now. Dallas and I were about to throw down.
Then I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the “playground teacher,” a volunteer mother who supervised the kids at recess, the arbiter of disagreements, the police of the playground, the authority figure outside of class who struck fear in the hearts of children for the simple fact that if she was addressing you at all, you were in trouble. Her hand was on my shoulder like the icy touch of Death.
Two girls, Jennifer and Andie (the latter of which I’d had a crush on for a while), had run to fetch the playground teacher, and the hefty woman had traveled the distance from the playground toys to the far end of the soccer field with amazing (alarming, really) speed. Before a single punch could be thrown, she had us both by our collars and marched us all the way to the Principal’s office. I can only assume that all the other children were left unattended while she brought us to justice.
The Principal’s office. I, the good kid coveted by parents, had been sent to the Principal’s office. We were told to sit down in chairs in the reception area until we could be seen. Dallas and I sat without talking. Rumor had it that there was a wooden paddle hanging on the wall inside to spank bad kids. It was a private school, and spankings were sometimes given to unruly kids, but only by the Principal. I was sure that Dallas had been here many times from the way he sat casually in his chair. The paddle probably couldn’t hurt a guy like him. I was scared to death. Recess had to be over by now, and I wondered if Mrs. Albano knew where I was. Would she be worried that I didn’t return from recess, or was she informed that I was a terrible kid who’d been sent to the Principal’s office? How was I going to rebuild her trust in me?
Finally, the receptionist escorted us in. Mrs. Schindler was a thin woman with waste-length hair parted in the middle, a floral dress and never wore any makeup. While we were squarely in the 80s, she’d never quite given up her late-60s fashion sense. She was the last hippie.
Mrs. Schindler came out from behind her desk and joined us in a cluster of upholstered chairs arranged in a circle. I couldn’t see a wooden spanking paddle hanging anywhere, but I was sure it was nearby. That’s what Principals do; their whole job is to punish bad kids.
“Tell me what happened,” she said softly. “Doug, you go first.”
My heart climbed into my throat, trying to make a break for it. I swallowed it back down, where it began to bang against my ribs in a grand protest demanding habeas corpus. I gripped the arms of my chair, braced myself, and then let it all out.
“Every day, Dallas trips me and trips me and I don’t do anything about it and I never did anything to him and he keeps tripping me at recess and I’m tired of him tripping me all the time and I was just sticking up for myself and if you have a problem with that you can call my dad!”
“Is that all?” Mrs. Schindler asked calmly. I nodded my head. “Doug, why don’t you go back to class.”
That was it? I was free to go? That last line about my dad must have really worked! I walked to the door while Dallas remained in his seat. I let myself out before she could change her mind.
When I got back to class, I quietly took my seat at the front. Mrs. Albano briefly interrupted her lesson to say, “Welcome back,” before carrying on. She didn’t smile and she didn’t frown. Was that a snide remark of disapproval? Or was she merely acknowledging my presence? I couldn’t read her. It occurred to me that the other kids might be staring at me, wondering what had happened, but I didn’t dare look. I focused my attention on the lesson like a good student is supposed to do.
Dallas entered the room a few minutes later and took his seat at the back. “Welcome back,” Mrs. Albano said to him in the same neutral tone. I glanced back at him. He didn’t look like he’d been crying, and I wondered if he’d gotten the paddle. His face betrayed nothing. No one ever spoke of the incident again.
Dallas and Pat never bothered me after that, and as far as I can remember, they didn’t bother anyone else, either. For the rest of the year, I was able to fly comfortably under the radar. The following year, I started fifth grade in a public school. My friend Curtis still went to SCCS, and told me one night during a sleepover that kids at school were reminiscing about the year before. While most kids barely remembered me, Dallas had said, “Doug was pretty cool.” I guess I did earn that guy’s respect after all.
To this day, I’ve never thrown a punch. To this day, I hate violence. But, I’ve never again backed down from confrontation, either, or allowed myself to be steamrolled by bullies, be it at school, at work, or out in public. I live my life on my terms, and I won’t let the “bigger kids” push me around, nor will I push others around. My dad didn’t teach me a lot growing up, but that’s one lesson that turned out to be really useful. Bullies suck, but only if you let them bully you.
