Posts Tagged “taunting”

Kelly Phelan
Elementary School

When I was in elementary school, maybe fourth or fifth grade, Liz Claiborne handbags suddenly became The Thing. Specifically, the kind with the tiny raised triangle logo covering the outside. As I recall, they cost about 30 or 40 bucks which, at that time and in that place, was quite a lot of money for a purse, especially for a little girl.

My parents tried, to some degree, to keep me from getting caught up in the materialism that often affects preteens, but all the popular girls had Liz Claiborne handbags and, being a distinctly unpopular child myself, of course I wanted one so bad I could taste it. At Christmas, they finally relented, and on Christmas morning, I unwrapped my very own brand-new Liz Claiborne. It was the first designer item I’d ever owned, and I could not have been happier. I couldn’t wait to take it to school.

The first day back to school after Christmas break, I walked into math class with the Liz slung over my shoulder. I sat down at my desk, and I could hear the popular girls whispering and giggling. I thought they were admiring my new purse. I guess I should’ve known something was rotten in Denmark.

“Hey, Kelly,” one of them finally piped up. “I love your new Liz.”

“Thanks!” I said. “I got it for Christmas.” I tried to look nonchalant.

“When are you gonna take it to church?” she asked pointedly.

I was confused. “I, uh … I took it to Mass yesterday … ?”

“No, I mean, when are you gonna take it to a real church?” She and the other girls burst out laughing.

That pretty much sums up my earliest experiences with people of different faiths than my own.

I still remember that moment vividly. I can feel my face burning, and I can feel the sting as I tried to blink back tears.

My parents came from different faith backgrounds. My mom’s family is, by and large, Methodist. In fact, some of our ancestors were Methodist Circuit Riders (and more than one of them is named John Wesley). My dad’s family was mostly Catholic. Because of negative experiences in their childhoods, neither of my parents have much use for churchgoing, and no one else except for my brothers (who are Catholic) attended church regularly, either. Nevertheless, my parents did their best to see to my religious education (my dad and I read my children’s Bible cover to cover a few times over the years), and I guess that education must have included some Catholic doctrine. I say “must have” because it was quite some time before I learned that not every Christian believes these things to be true.

At last, my mom decided that some good ol’ fashioned church would do me some good, so she sent me every week to Methodist Sunday School. After Sunday School, my friend Angela’s mother would pick me up on the corner outside the church and drive me and her four kids to Mass.

—-

If you’re at all less idealistic than my parents and I, then you can guess that this did not work out very well. More than once, an adult felt the need to tell me that they were praying for me because I was not a Christian, I worshipped statues and was thus going to hell.

A version of this essay was originally published on BachelorGirl.net.

Jason P. LaComb
Age 12

As far back as I can remember, boys called other boys fags; I was called a fag. In grade school, I didn’t think too deeply or seriously about the slur since I had always known I was different from most other boys, and at the time, I thought different meant special or gifted or original. Looking back, the other boys’ perceptive powers must have detected that my mother lovingly molded me in ways only a mother knows, while father was absent. Sure I displayed some very “feminine” characteristics in both physicality and personality, but I still peed in a urinal, played dodge ball, and had girlfriends most of the time.

But something changed in junior that thrust me deep into culture shock, as overnight I was reduced from big fish student body sixth grade president to little fish encircled by pond sharks. For me, the abstract term “fag” underwent a Jekyll and Hyde mutation. Suddenly, like sticks and stones, the word itself began to hurt me just as a kid’s pushing or hitting. And my middle school predators were not exclusively male; one of the most aggressive and relentless was a socially awkward girl I initially thought my friend.

One day she decided I was her ticket to fly under the radar and avoid being victimized herself. During class free time, she turned to me and began a Q&A game. In the moment, I thought the game would be a series of innocent questions to while away the time. Nearby, a crowd of boys sat within earshot; they would be the audience for her well-orchestrated sniper attack.

1st Question: If I asked you to look for dirt under your finger nails, how would you do it?

Innocently stepping onto the land mine, I turned my palms down, lifted my hands vertically, and then tipped the nails back slightly toward my eyes.

Survey says: FAG! incorrect response.

The correct “non-fag” response of course was to turn palms up and curl ever so masculinely the fingers inward toward the eyes. Taking the bait, the emergent testosterone boys smelled blood and moved in for the kill. Cornered, I cowered and waited for the next shot.

2nd Question: If I asked you to put on some Chapstick, how would you do it?

Not having an abundance of acceptable responses at my disposal, I reluctantly applied the lip balm first to lower lip, left to right several times; then upper lip just as thoroughly; pressed my lips together the way my wonderful mother had taught so many years ago; and finished with an audible smacking sound.

Survey says: FAG! incorrect response.

The correct “non-fag” response of course was to rush thru the effort in a slipshod manner and finish abruptly by smacking the lip balm onto the desk. By this time, my interrogator had been elevated to resident fortune teller and her tarot cards began revealing a truth to the student body –- at least that’s what the growing pack of predators figured.

3rd & Final Question: If I asked you to walk a straight line, how would you do it?

Heart racing and palms sweating, I finally saw an escape route. I’d perform this last incriminating parlor trick, keep walking right out of the classroom to the nearest cave, and lick my wounds until the next school day.

As I stood, the boys couldn’t contain themselves any longer and starting verbally hitting me with FAG! HOMO! Pretty Boy!

Propelling myself forward, I crossed one leg in front of the other like a seasoned runway model — to this day I am not sure if nature, nurture or both created my walk, but it was definitely different from the other boys, and even I knew it was not “normal.” The taunts grew louder and laughter began punctuating the cacophony, and I think I heard the socially awkward girl holler as I slipped through the door, “What a loser; such a faggot.”

That was the precise moment I decided to change.

I knew in that instant how I could preclude any future attacks of the sort. Practicing all night that first night and then for weeks thereafter, I consciously and physically altered the way I walked. Adopting a pseudo-bowlegged stance, I trained my legs to spread just a bit and my toes to point slightly outward, thus preventing any leg crossover. Unwavering focus and determination ensured that a relapse would never occur, nor any traces of the runway walk remain.

The following year, eigth grade, my new walk, lip balm application technique, and finger curling enabled some modest social gains. Then, an abrupt family move landed me in a new town and fostered a complete transformation as my past faux pas could be securely locked away.

As an adult, I often wonder as I inadvertently glance at my nails “incorrectly,” how my life may have been different if I hadn’t been so adept at conforming –- at least on the outside. As a father, I wonder how my two children might be pressured to change and what aspects of their beautiful individuality might be lost forever. Hopefully, they will find the strength and courage I lacked to resist conformity, so they remain one of a kind on the outside as well as inside.

Trish Lange
Elementary School

I was basically a walking bullseye my entire childhood. In elementary school, I was foot taller than everyone else including some of the teachers. I wore leg braces for several years which required me to wear big, clunky shoes all the time … even to bed. I was a brain, a geek. Other girls had posters of the New Kids on the Block, I had posters of Kirk and Spock.

The other girls either taunted me or just flat out ignored me. The guys taunted, mocked, pushed, and shoved me. I never had a date. I went to Prom by myself.

My parents tried their best to support me. They’d always say, “Someday, all this will make sense. God must have a reason why you’re going through all this. Just try to hang on.” I thought they were full of it, but had little choice but to hang on by my fingernails until I could escape to college.

And escape I did. Free to really be me, I flourished. I had wonderful friends, met a wonderful man (my now-husband), and graduated with highest honors.

Fifteen years on, through a turn of events, I am now working in the same school district that I attended as a child and that my own children now attend. Teachers have come and gone, buildings have changed, but unfortunately, kids have not. Predators still circle the classroom or the playground. Smelling the blood in the water, they still seek out the weakest prey in the crowd.

I am no longer prey, but remember so well what it’s like to be surrounded by sharks. God’s reason for my childhood torment has become abundantly clear. All the pain I endured has made me a steel safety cage for my own children and for those other tiny fish in the sea, strong enough to help ward off any kind of shark attack.

by Beatrice M. Hogg
Age 5 to 11

When I was in grade school, I had the cooties. No one ever explained to me what “cooties” were, or how I caught them. Unlike the measles, they lasted all six years of elementary school, following me through three schools. But over the years, I have been able to determine a few things about cooties. Apparently, only girls got cooties. Girls who developed cooties were different in some way — they were either plain-looking or overweight, dressed funny, or had a strange family. Unfortunately, I fit all of those categories.

I grew up in a small coal-mining town in western Pennsylvania called Hills Station. I was adopted at three weeks old and brought to Hills from North Carolina. My adopted parents were in their late fifties/early sixties when they adopted me, a generation older than the parents of my peers. I grew up an only child in a town of mostly large Catholic and Baptist families. When I was around four, my father retired from the mine and bought his first Cadillac, staying with that brand for the rest of his life. Only one other father in town drove a Cadillac. I was embarrassed to be seen in the car.

And there were my personal cootie credentials. I was left-handed. When I used pencils, I smeared the page as I wrote, leaving a gray smudge on one side of my left hand. My right-handed parents tried to teach me to tie my shoes, but by following their example, I learned to tie backwards. The laces always came apart, and other kids laughed as I struggled to make my strange-looking bows. Maybe my left-handedness also caused me to be uncoordinated. I could not hit a ball, kick a ball, throw a ball, or run. Gym class was my personal Hell. And I was smart. All of the black kids accused me of trying to be white because I did well on tests. I was chubby and dark-skinned, with short nappy hair and big feet. I got a new outfit for the first day of school and new dresses for Christmas and Easter, but that was it. Most of my clothes were ill-fitting hand-me-downs from my neighbor Holly, who was older and bigger than me.

Six years of cootie-ness. I started first grade at five, because of some law related to my birth month and the fact we had no kindergarten. I was a year younger than most of my classmates. My first school was Hills School, a two-room schoolhouse across the street from my house. During my first week of school, I fell when the recess bell rang and was trampled by the other kids. I still have a scar on my leg from the rock that was embedded in my knee that day. In gym class, no one wanted me on their team. No one wanted to drink from the water fountain after me, as cooties were contagious. Since my last name was Hogg, every morning’s roll call was punctuated by oinks and snorts.

For fourth grade, I had to go to Canonsburg, the nearest big town. By then, a new elementary school was being built outside of Hills. But until it was finished, I had to catch a bus every morning to First Ward School. Riding the bus was stressful. If I was first in line, I got a seat all to myself, as no one wanted to sit next to me. If had to share a seat, the other kid tried to move as far away from me as possible, so no cooties could jump on them. The boys in the back of the bus made jokes. One of the worse insults imaginable was, “You like Marvella Hogg.” Everyone on the bus would laugh, as no one could imagine someone liking me. I pretended not to hear

One month after the start of my fifth year of school, Hills Hendersonville Elementary School opened. I no longer had to ride the bus, but now my father drove me to school in the dreaded Cadillac. Kids snickered as I got out of the car, either because of the car or because of my gray-haired father. At ten, I wore the same shoe size as my mother, seven and a half. My mother thought that a sturdy, brown brogan would be the best shoe for school. The big, heavy shoes made me look like a cartoon character. In fifth and sixth grade, I hated test days. Kids sitting near me would try to copy my papers. I had to be a contortionist, trying to cover my work while answering the next question. Even my cousin, and girls I grew up with made jokes about me behind my back. At Hills-Hendersonville, we had a cafeteria. Neither the black kids nor the white kids wanted me to sit with them, so I sat at the end of a table by myself. Finally, the two years of torture were over, and I was in Junior High.

I wish I could say that Cecil Junior High was better, but it was more of the same. I started wearing glasses at twelve and my mother died the summer after seventh grade, when I was thirteen. And don’t get me started about puberty. But I survived.

I am now over fifty and I still don’t fit in. But what was once weird is now just eccentric. I have friends who are just as unique as I am, and I don’t have to ever kick a ball if I don’t want to. I shop at thrift stores, buying the discarded clothes of strangers, but I get to pick them. And now, I like my unusual name. Growing up as a Cootie Girl has made me more sensitive, a quality I use in my writing. They may have been laughing at me then, but as a writer, I can have the last word — in print. Cootie Girls Rule! (Stick tongue out here.)

by Gwendomama
Age nine at the time

I had a horrible sore throat. But I knew that if I called my mom, I had better be really sick. I waited until each swallow caused more agony; the razor blades of saliva being forced down. I finally went to the office, where the nurse called my mom. It may have been my tears, or it may have been the obvious sick look of hot red cheeks and swelling eyelids. Whatever it was, I was taken right off to the family doctor.

Four days, two blood tests, and countless baby aspirin later, we found out that I had “mono,” i.e., infectious mononucleosis.

I had never heard of mono, but I was sick, and not in an enjoyable, “hang out in my parents’ room watching TV and being served tea and toast and pudding” sort of way—more in a “feverish, lump-swallowing, headachy and swollen” kind of way.

I was miserable with mono for one week, then I became miserable with boredom.

I was still too sick to go school, but no longer sick enough to be content with the confines of bed rest. My mother tried to help: I was suddenly allowed unrestricted access to the television, but found daytime TV before the advent of cable boooooring. She brought me find-a-word puzzles, complicated origami projects, new books — and pudding.

I was desperate to go back to school after two weeks, but the doctor said that my spleen was still freakishly enlarged, and it was too risky for me to go back to school. When I complained, I was told that if I was knocked down, pushed, or worst of all, punched, I could bleed to death. I wondered why, if my spleen was that much of a problem, the doctor didn’t just remove it. But as I didn’t relish the idea of being cut open, I kept that thought to myself. I did laugh out loud about the “being punched” comment though, and assured the doctor I had never gotten into fisticuffs with anyone, ever.

He condemned me to two more weeks of staying home and “taking it easy” (running laps up and down the stairs and jumping on the bed when my mom went to the store and would not notice the chandelier shaking under my room). During this time, my brother, who went to the same school, would bring me my homework and notable nuggets of school gossip or scandal. One day he came home and told me that everyone was talking about how I had the Kissing Disease, and how everyone knew I had kissed someone to get it.

Huh?

Most certainly not.

Brian McCann had pinned me against the climbing structure and planted one on me, but that was in second grade, two whole years ago!

My mom confirmed that mono was called the Kissing Disease, because it was most prevalent and contagious among college kids, and they kissed a lot. I was satisfied with her answer.

Later that week, my best friend Kirsty was visiting and told me that most of the kids were saying that I had to have French kissed someone to get mono, and suspects’ names were circulating. Brian McCann would have been the prime suspect, but since he was also the one who delivered the Divine Truth about mono germs being passed through French kissing, he was out. Brian suggested that I had kissed either Herbie, the kid who always wore flood pants and who never smelled quite right, or Mister K, the janitor.

All of this information was delivered to me in snippets via Kirsty the week before I was to return to school. But I didn’t worry too much; Brian McCann was no rocket scientist, and his accusations were ridiculous. I didn’t even feel the need to find out what a French kiss was, to deduce if I actually had, accidentally, French-kissed someone.

I was allowed back to school with explicit instructions from the doctor: I was not allowed to walk the four blocks to school, or attend PE (physical education) classes for the remainder of the school year. My doctor was still concerned that I would take a dodge ball to the spleen. Or fall on the way home. Or get punched.

My three best friends surrounded me on that first day back, giggling and welcoming me excitedly.
My teacher Miss Spranger smiled at me and said, “So, our little Gwendolyn is back from having the kissing disease!”

The class erupted into laughter. I was mortified, but somehow remained smiling. My beloved teacher had betrayed me, but surely I could take a small joke?

Before we were excused for PE, she asked if I wanted to stay in the classroom or come watch my classmates participate in PE. The idea of being benched in front of all those kids was horrible, so I chose to stay in the classroom alone while the teacher went to the lounge for a smoke break.

After a week or so of this, I got bored and started wandering the halls looking for something more interesting.

At one end of the building was a door with a lot of noise coming from behind it. I stood on my tippytoes, looked in the window, and saw the most interesting pieces of wooden equipment and toys I had ever seen. And it was full of children—little tiny ones—who were all different in some way from the children at the “other” preschools I’d seen. I scanned the room, intrigued, when suddenly the door opened and I almost fell into the room.

“Can I help you?” asked the pretty young teacher who had opened the door.

“Umm … well … uhh … could I come in and meet the little kids?”

“SURE!” she practically shouted. She walked me around the room, introducing me to each child as if they were … normal.

“This is Jenna. She really hates her new stander and she is feeling mad about that today. This is Vincent. He just learned how to roll himself over! This is Alison.  She really wants to say hi to you!”
I looked down. Alison was grinning wildly up at me, her chin glistening with fresh drool.

I checked her hand for drool and then grasped it as I had been taught to years ago. I shook her hand while she grinned more wildly and made some squeals of delight. For some reason, this was okay.

“Uhh … nice to meet you, Alison … uhh … should I … can I … read you a book?”

After that, Miss Avery asked my teacher if I could spend my PE periods in her classroom, “helping.” I was thrilled to be invited on a regular basis—being able to help made me feel important, and there was something about that room, and those children, that made me want to be there. I felt grown up. I felt pride. I wasn’t sick and I hadn’t French kissed the janitor. I was a junior teacher!

Every Tuesday and Thursday I got to spend nearly an hour helping the lone teacher and her eight awkward students. Together, we celebrated such victories as audible utterances, rolling over, self-feeding, and hauling one’s prone body up a soft foam ramp.

One day, not too long after I started my new gig, I came back to the classroom one day to find Brian McCann already back from PE, sweaty, energetic, and wild-eyed.

“Soooooo, Little Miss Priss, where were you during gym class today?”

“You know I can’t do PE anymore,” I hissed back.

“So where were you? I saw you hanging out with the retards.”

I was ashamed. I was caught. I wasn’t sure what my offense had been. I just knew I had been caught doing something terrible.

“RETARD! RETARD! Gwen is a RETARD!”

Since the teacher was not yet back from her smoke break, he had the momentum of anarchy behind him.

“RETARD, RETARD!” Half the class joined in, just arriving and not even knowing why they were chanting along.

I felt so much shame. I was embarrassed. I had broken some sort of social code; one that I had not even realized existed until then. Then again, I had been in remedial math since my month off of school. Maybe I was retarded.

I went to the nurse and asked her to call my mom. I told her that my spleen was hurting and I needed to go home.

She gave me a strange look but made the call.

The next day, I stayed home. When I returned, things were worse. Snickers and covert taunts of “retard, stupid retard, retard head” were the fun of the schoolyard. My brother wasn’t there. Kirsty was nowhere to be seen. Almost everyone got in on the action. A foot shot out — someone tried to trip me as I ran away. Suddenly, the silly idea that anyone would ever want to punch me became frighteningly not silly.

Then in the afternoon, came PE. I had to make a choice. I didn’t want to let Miss Avery down, but I didn’t want to be teased anymore.

Then again, I didn’t want to lose the sense of superiority I had over these mere children in my class. While they were off playing kickball, I was a teacher’s aide!

I had another full month of skipping PE to go. I had to decide.

I helped Miss Avery for the rest of the year.

I wasn’t able to continue helping after that.

The following year I asked to switch schools.