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Where I Bare My Soul About Childhood Bullying, Which Never Seems to Stop [1]
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Date: 2023-09-21
A while back I wrote about trolls in the inbox, some of them threatening. A favorite tactic of trolls is to encourage suicide, which is of course to, in general, make someone feel worthless. In the split second I have to absorb the information, it pierces. But my skin is thicker than it used to be. I am less interested in those opinions.
Most of the time, those people are as miserable as they try to make others. But sometimes, it hits a nerve.
This usually happens with references made to heritage, or my conception. Bringing my family into it, so to speak. “You were an accident.” “Your mom would have had a youth without you.” Some of this gets very personal. So there is never a moment where I just lie back and exhult in the fact of my birth, like some sort of gift to the world. I have to ask myself every day, “Am I worth it?”
The key is to respond with, yes. This is harder when your father walked out, and your family was broken, and it seems childhood was five minutes ago.
I was born into poverty just after prosperity. My grandfather lost his job, my mom was a teen-ager, my dad found me inconvenient, so the family tried to reinvent itself in Texas. What we found was regressive attitudes and hardship. I didn’t have the nicest shoes. I was not wearing designer jeans. For a while I resented this. Then one day I met a kid so poor, his shoes were duct taped. We became friends. As it turns out, I took great joy in frustrating the rich kids by refusing to play their game.
In fact, I found that when I befriended other underprivileged kids, it got under their skin. I learned something as a pre-teen I could never have learned as a privileged child; the powerful don’t want you to be similarly powerful. The cool don’t want you to be similarly cool. They only want you to abdicate any sense of self to attempt to be.
They can never accept you. If they do, they relinquish control over you. This is not acceptable. So no matter what, whether a teen can save up for “Girbauds” (jeans) or high end sneakers, it will never be good enough. Once you are on the wrong side of the tracks, opinions never change. Their joy is derived from seeing a once independent person sell themselves out to fit in. The minute you change an outfit to be cool, you are a puppet on a string. If you could afford string, that is. This is “Annabelle” in Arizona.
In August 2019, my family and I lost our home and had to move into a hotel. Then the pandemic hit and made things worse. It became harder to get into housing. During my senior year, I was stuck in a single room hotel with my parents and brother. Luckily, we were able to afford a room; I don't know what would have happened if we couldn’t. One of the only reasons we can afford food is because of the food stamps we get monthly. Good thing, because groceries are expensive; same as before the pandemic. Access to technology is another thing that can be hard. In the beginning of high school, I had a phone made in 2016. As this past year went by, the phone started messing up, taking forever to load. Having a phone that is slow doesn’t do well for online classes. If my school didn’t offer laptops to students who needed them, I wouldn’t have been able to take my classes. My family couldn’t afford to buy me a new phone or a laptop for class.
High school is not so much an educational experience as a social boot camp. It is there we learn about cliques, and gossip, betrayal and humiliation. Yet somewhere along the way I accidentally shifted my social status, by becoming athletic. While my grades were still good, I became more popular with young women, even though I was still the same kid who read encyclopedias.
Me at 18
But you can never let anybody know that as a teen. Then you won’t be cool anymore. At that time, education was an impediment to opposite sex success, and that had been a recurring theme since Revenge of the Nerds. Smart kids sat at home. Quarterbacks, or in my case, combo guards, got dates.
This may be different now. I hope it is.
But once in place, this dynamic will follow you throughout life.
My class is preparing a 30 year reunion in 2025. I get that some people want to see their friends. There is nothing wrong with the concept of a reunion. But my school and childhood frankly was colored by bullies.
So, I will not be attending. It isn’t out of shame, or a feeling of not reaching goals, it is just that it is a waste of my time.
Going to a reunion is enjoyable and productive for some, but for me it is just another way to buy a designer jean. It justifies them. It puts the bullies back in control. Having to prove myself all over, 30 years later is a request I don’t need to respond to. But if only today’s high schoolers knew what I know now.
Bullies are also victims, usually of a miserable home life, perhaps wracked with abuse. Children do not tend to jump out of the womb, be raised by warm, caring, empathetic parents, and then randomly lay waste to society. It does happen, however. Ted Bundy was considered to have a loving home life, for example. But maybe that isn’t the whole story.
Bullies are more likely to become anti-social adults, more likely to be involved in domestic violence and child abuse, more likely to commit crimes and more likely to have children who also are bullies. Some bully just because, some because they’ve been bullied, some because they want to be powerful and popular, and most — because they have learned this behavior at home. Bullying expert Dr. Malcolm Smith said “bullies must be “disciplined, not punished,” and bullies must admit that what they did was wrong. “That is the first part of re-educating a bully.”
Maybe Bundy was loved without being disciplined. Hard to say.
Bullies are traveling down a dark road. So one might ask, “Ok Todd, since you became popular, did you turn your back on the unpopular?” I spend every day trying to be better, because I am immeasurably flawed. I am tempermental, and sometimes mercurial, anxious and at times even paranoid, all hallmarks of childhood poverty.
But,
I’m trying, Ringo. I’m trying real hard to be the shepherd.
-Jules, Pulp Fiction
So it is a fair question. But I did not. It perplexed my classmates. And while I was popular with young women, I was never, ever popular with young men, for that very reason. I did not accept that being cool required the pain of others. I never gave them the satisfaction of becoming like them. And I can promise you, they still resent it.
A surefire way to recall (and reinforce) feelings of inadequacy is to surreptitiously anticipate some form of redemption. Even a more level playing field does not necessarily offer the opportunity for recognition or respect (frequent proxies for atonement). Furtive hopes may masquerade as a tacit expectation to be seen (and in this manner redeemed). Be aware of this secret aspiration. -Laura Martocci, Ph.D.
As for our reunion, it is supposed to be over a weekend, at a resort, because the one thing you want to do with insecure middle-aged high school cliques is put them in a hotel, together, with alcohol. This kind of fun can only be expected to end up on YouTube, with a caption that says, “Still got it!”
But the filtering of these sorts of people becomes easier. For instance, when I once explained my situation and path forward to an old classmate, on Facebook, they had the wrong question in response.
“I had cancer surgery, then started a news business. It is an online newsletter that advocates for progressive causes. I do interviews, and relay stories, and try to get people help.”
“What does it pay?” is almost always the response.
The one person that I still talk to from high school asked me this question: “Does it make you happy?”
This was a better question.
I don’t need to go to a reunion to be hit on, or be hit by, ex-classmates. Many of them are still shallow. I know they still measure self-worth by net worth. I know they speak of masculinity and manhood and being a tough guy, with not the core strength to change a tire.
And all of that could be resolved, if they just had the core strength, to change themselves.
I don’t know how it ends up for me. I don’t know if I live an average life expectancy or die younger. I don’t know if I will grow The Claw News into something more powerful, or something that lights a small corner of the world, but I do know this:
The family under the overpass haunts me. The friend wth the duct taped shoes, and the taunting he took, haunt me. Knowing that blocks from me children go hungry keeps me up at night.
So if you read this, wondering why I don’t take easier paths, the answer is complex.
But if perhaps you went to school with me, don’t think your invitation to a party will validate me. Don’t think your flirtation will intoxicate me. Don’t talk to me about my jump shot, and what could have been.
My chances for the NBA died when my heart went out of rhythm. But I didn’t. So I can only look forward.
When I tell you what I am, and what drives me to write at 1 in the morning, please give it some thought. Then ask me how you can help kids.
And I will tell you, start by dedicating your life to making sure every child feels secure, and respected, and loved. Spread empathy. Rebuild blighted communities.
And if you want to make up for who you used to be like I try to do every day?
Start by being less focused on the size of your truck..
and more on the size of your heart.
-ROC
Mrs. Claw recently had her surgery and is starting the dialysis process soon. We both extend our heartfelt thanks for your support! You are all family.
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Love,
-ROC
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