Take a Stand Against Bullying

To tell my story would require several weeks of writing. I don't know how to really narrow it down to just a few words. Let's just say I was raised to believe that everyone is the same on the inside. We all have our struggles and though our race can make those struggles unique to our situation in life, one person's struggle is no less real than another people's and we should all be considerate of each other. I grew up on Harding University Campus. I spent time talking to actual African's Sam Walton of Walmart fame brought here to teach about democracy in the hopes they would go back home and help out their home countries. Yes, Sam Walton was a nation builder of the hands off persuasion. He canceled the program when 99 percent of the kids just went to work for the UN.

Anyway, I went from sitting in the student union comparing my American history book to what they were being taught as though it would somehow be different, to moving to a town where the road into the place was adopted by the KKK. The weekend before school started an elders daughter took me crusing to meet the people I would be going to class with and wouldn't you know one of the black boys working the watermellon feilds for extra spending money just happened to walk through town right at dusk and I just happened to have to be told he was black and I without thinking about that sign didn't react the way they thought I should.

I was labeled the lover of a word I would never say unless I was speaking Spanish and pointing out the color of a car or dress, Only, their version of the word didn't end with the same sound. They did everything from come to my house and try to break in to drag me out in the middle of the night to one of the girls hitting her best friend and telling her best friend's father that my father did it so he would be arrested.

They found a new victim my second year of school. Mom had told me it would stop when I got to the high school because they had a better principle. For the most part, it did. Right up until a week or so before spring break when I found out they had someone new to pick on and had scared her so badly she had a car accident and died because none of them called the police. It still ticks me off to think about.

I did what I could to scare them straight. I resorted to being a one-time bully telling them that everything bad that ever happens to them for the rest of their lives I would have a hand in, even if I lived half way around the world.

I have cousins that still live in the area and know the girls. Apparently, they all are still behaving themselves because they believe I am watching. It's been 30 years, but I'm still watching. I guess I am scary when I'm mad.

The KKK was disbanded by kids whose fathers ran it. They told their mothers they would be attending college out of state and if things didn't change while they were gone they wouldn't come home. In an area where no one ever leaves, that scared their mothers into putting their father's on the straight and narrow. Last I heard, about a quarter of the school district's population was now African American and Hispanic and the student council controlled punishment for bullying through the use of a student court. Anyone could report a person for bullying and witnesses on both sides could be called. A false report of a bully onto the bullied got the bully suspended.

Though I still live with the emotional scars and suffer from PTSD as well as Social Anxiety Disorder, it was worth what I went through to know that a town was able to get their crap together. I don't take credit for it. That's on the people I left behind when I got the heck out of dodge. That was when the hard work started. I just couldn't stand to see people be mean to others. I was doing what I thought any decent person would do. Apparently, it never crossed anyone's mind that they should risk bodily harm by stepping in to stop a bully from picking on a girl with down syndrome. I couldn't imagine not doing it. I wasn't trying to set an example and I had no idea people were watching me until years later when I ran into one of them who asked me if I knew how hard it was to fill my shoes. I don't think they did. I think they just started living up to who they really were.

I am proud of what they accomplished. I won't ever go back. But, I am proud of them. Being bullied was worth the pain. Told you I would have to write a book.