Mean Streak - Bullied Without Realizing It

When I was in  5^th grade, I was  a teacher’s pet, a trait that I had from pre-nursery through the 1^st 2 years of high school. Whatever assignment the teachers would give us, I would have them ready sooner and better done. I used to do up my hair in a fountain shaped ponytail, that’s right, up till sophomore year.

One day, our Moral Studies teacher Mrs. Lily Newman assigned us a project. We had to make groups

of 3-7 and stage a short play about time management, stating that she couldn’t think of anything simpler for grading us. Also, the principal would be present during evaluation.

Thinking back on that day, her instructions clearly implied that it was just a formality that had to be fulfilled so she could state that she had honored the principal’s directive which stated that every class must do something for Moral Studies considering how lax our attitude towards it was. Being a small school, Mrs. Newman was one of the two Moral Studies teachers that we had.

I had several requests from people who wanted to be in my group. Was this because I had loads of friends? Hardly. I was in demand because in group projects I always did all the work but put down my name last. Naturally, I was baffled and had no way to choose someone. So I chose my best friend at that time, Rebecca Pauls; the guy I liked but not enough to muster the courage to actually talk to, Seiko Akiyama; the girl who didn’t like noodles and always exchanged lunch with me, Naomi Jasper; and David Perry, the only guy with an computer and a printer.

You can pretty well guess what happened after that. I thought about the most effective way I was reminded about the importance of my time. I went with the first thought that entered my mind – mom’s incessant reprimands and reminders. Although they put a serious dent in my fun time, they did their target job and made me realize what was important.

I interviewed my mom about her daily routine and took notes from dad to prevent the very real possibility of over exaggeration on her part. I jotted down all the things she does around the house and then set about writing what it would be like if some of those tasks were delayed or performed before time. I based my play on all that could go wrong if my mother woke up just an hour later than her usual time in the morning.

The play showed how she would wake us late, then not be able to pack lunch for me, dad or Preston (my little brother). This would force me to buy something from the McDonalds ‘near our school and on my way there, I was struck by a vehicle and suffered serious but not fatal injuries. Mom would be crying when she saw me in the hospital and blame herself for being just a teensy bit lazy.

Sounds morbid? Well, I had a hyperactive imagination. Plus I had seen my mom blame herself for so many big and tiny things that I thought it would be an homage to her, and I did ask her if she was fine with it before I finalized the idea. Anyway, I typed up the play and e-mailed it to David and asked him to print 6 copies, 2 copies extra just to be thorough. In case, you were wondering, yes, I really was that anal.

We performed the play, with me playing my mom, Seiko playing my dad, Rebecca and David being me and Pranjal and Naomi being the narrator. After 3 groups had performed, the principal was looking really irritated. I would be too, in her shoes. All the kids had put up the same thing – they were late to class and got scolded by the teacher or missed a test. After our play was staged, I could tell even with my less than average people skills that she was happy that someone had put some effort into the plot, even if it was for just 10 points. Oh no, that’s not my interpretation, it’s what she said, verbatim. She was so impressed that she decided to make us perform the play in the auditorium with all the parents attending.

Up to that point, I was happy and proud of myself. My group members were psyched too. After all, what 5^th grader doesn’t like being appreciated?

The next day we performed the play and were met with applause, sincere from the parents and teachers but forced from the students. How did I know that? From the succeeding events.

All that day, whenever we had some leisure time, a student would come up to me and ask me to act like my mom. I would do it and then the kid would walk away with his/her friends laughing/giggling. I must have done it more than 20 times over the next week without realizing that the kids were mocking me.

A week after the play, I was in the middle of my acting bit when a guy from the 8^th grade laughed hard and called me Aunt Amy. I stopped dead in my tracks as I was confused. Even though I was not very emotionally mature, I knew his laugh was not appreciative but derogatory. This was repeated many times over the next couple of days; a random guy would show up and ridicule me calling me aunt. They would take away my food saying a mother should consider the needs of kids first. The fact that I was always in the library during spare hours didn’t help any.

A few days later the teasing and the constant comments started to get to me and one day, I went back home crying. My mom was extremely concerned because I was an unusually happy child (her words) and seeing me cry was somewhat of a rare sight for her even when I was an infant. After I told her about the whole incident, her first reaction was to advise me never to take part in anything extracurricular, ever again. However, after a while, she calmed down a bit and advised me to talk to my teacher or let her do it for me. This solution, while logical, was not something that would help me in the long run, according to my father. He pointed out that there wouldn’t always be an authority over my head to fight my battles for me and I had to learn to stand up for myself.

He asked me to be articulate with the next person who came along to irritate me about their weaknesses, using the heavy vocabulary words that I occasionally used, which confused even my parents. I did exactly what he asked me to and threw in bits of Sanskrit and French phrases to baffle the kids even further. At that time, I couldn’t understand why that worked.

Today, several years later I realize that it was about intellectual inadequacy that I inflicted upon the silly bullies. Even as kids, nobody likes feeling stupid. Did this mean they all became my friends? Nope. Au contraire, backbiting about me reached new heights, but with a big difference. Nobody dared say anything to my face for fear of feeling insulted without completely comprehending the context of the criticism of their personalities. At that time, this respite was enough for me.

And BTW, I discovered just a couple days ago while discussing the incident with my friends, that what the kids were doing back then is termed bullying, which sucked for the kid-me but was a blog-worthy experience for me, so at the end, I get victory points, don’t I?

Have you ever been bullied? Did you realize it? Was it especially cruel? Do tell me below in comments or in a private e-mail at reallyallthings@gmail.com. Who knows? I might be of some help.