Bullies in the Mainstream
I sat in the dean’s office. I can hear the two kids who had been pulled out of their classes just outside the door talking to each other before the dean gets back from whatever he was doing. They’re asking each other, “Do you know why we’re here?” “I have no idea, do you?”
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| Life was pretty good as a senior, with an exception or two. This group shot of seniors is from the yearbook. |
I was visibly upset one day after class and the resource room staff found out what was going on. I was absolutely ready to fight these kids.
I end up in the dean’s office. My English teacher happened to be in the outer office and joined the meeting after the dean returned. She admits she had no idea what was going on.
We sat in the front row of her class – all three of us.
And, by the way, I believe her. I also believe the kids had no idea why they’d been called to the office. Oh, they knew what they were doing. These guys weren’t even friends. I’d lay odds they never saw each outside of English class and never hung out after school.
And they had no clue why they were in the office. Together.
They didn’t deny anything once we were all in the office.
The dean wagged his finger at them, gave them a lecture telling them not to mock other kids, and sent us all back to class.
After writing about 1,800 to 2,000 words for this article, I finally wrote the above. It had been in my head the whole time. I was getting to it. Then one night, instead of turning my computer off around midnight, I wrote it.
One thought kept coming back to me as I finally went to bed around 1:30 in the morning. Nothing changed. Five years of being mainstreamed into “regular school,” and nothing ever changed. It was my senior year after starting in 8th grade in a mainstreaming program for kids with physical disabilities that had been in the elementary school for a few years and finally expanded to the middle school and high school, if I recall correctly, and nothing ever really changed.
Disabled kids being bullied or harassed or whatever you want to call it was just part of the deal of being mainstreamed. Teachers either didn’t notice or didn’t care about it, and it was just something to do for the kids who tormented us.
I remember the kid with the long blond hair who stuck his foot under the wheel of my power wheelchair as I passed him in the hall on my way to lunch every day one year in high school.
I remember the freshman who mumbled every time I passed his table in the cafeteria my sophomore year.
I remember the southern belle who was friendly with the geometry teacher leaning in my face and screaming wildly just for laughs.
In eighth grade, it was a foursome giving me the finger in science class the way kids might do to a monkey in the zoo just to see it react.
Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t exactly in an inner-city school that was rundown with kids running amuck. Not even close. We were in a fairly wealthy school district, as I understood it.
And the truth is, I never thought of myself as bullied. I had a bit too much mouth on me for that. At least that’s what I once told a bunch of Special Education majors (or something along those lines) when I was asked if I’d ever been bullied in school during a Q&A that I did for a former teacher of mine.
But I remember those kids. There were a lot of good kids, who I remember as well. Good teachers, too. At least a couple great ones. Some duds. I assume there are a few plain old bad teachers everywhere.
I did ok, I think. I could’ve done better and worked harder. I made mistakes. Some were made for me. I did alright. I wasn’t a victim, either.
October is apparently “Bullying Awareness Month.” Everything has a “month” or a “day” of recognition now. I don’t usually get into such things. They’re fairly phony and useless, if not commercialized nonsense.
But hearing about “Bullying Awareness Month” made me start thinking about some of my time being mainstreamed and the kids who picked on me. I also wondered a little bit about today’s kids with disabilities who are dealing with bullies.
Is anything different nowadays? Who exactly is being made aware?
When I wrote about some of my experiences of being picked on years after high school, my mom asked me why I had never said anything. I started thinking about that, too.
There was a subtlety to what most of the kids were doing. How do you explain some kid sticking his foot under your wheel just to be an asshole? Or a kid you don’t even know mumbling every time you go by?
I knew the questions that would come. Are you sure it wasn’t just an accident? How do you know he’s mumbling at you? Kids knew how to cover their tracks. On the rare occasion that they were actually confronted for their behavior by a teacher, they knew what to say. “Oh, I was just teasing with him.” “We were just messing around.”
Besides,
I was one of four boys. You sucked it up. You fought back.
It didn’t help that in eighth grade the middle school program was brand new. The tenor in school was that we were supposed to be thankful just to be there. In preparation for being mainstreamed, I was actually told that I had to do math on what was essentially a mini-typewriter with a receipt-like printout because my handwriting wouldn’t be acceptable to teachers. Never mind that it made math much more difficult to do. I eventually went from a pretty good math student to just getting by. It was about me being acceptable to a “real” teacher.
On one of my last days at the “special” school I attended, I was told how wonderful it was that a new science teacher at our new school had agreed to take us in her class. Otherwise, the special ed teacher joked, I would have been “stuck” with her for science in the “resource room.”
Were we really supposed to complain about the harassment we took from other kids?
Besides the punks in science class flipping me off for sport, I heard an endless stream of kids telling me how they wished they could ride in my scooter-type wheelchair instead of walking. More than one kid jumped on the back of my chair, insisting on being given a ride. Some felt so entitled, they were actually openly annoyed when I refused.
Never once, not one time, did a teacher intervene, tell a kid to get off the chair, or, God forbid, punish a kid for jumping on the wheelchair. It happened right in the hallways all the time. They saw what was going on. In middle school, I can’t really say they didn’t care. I think it was just considered harmless fun or part of the deal of being mainstreamed.
I still don’t know if anything I experienced in middle school rose to the level of bullying, especially in the ‘80s. But there was certainly a message that we were “less than.” It still angers me that I didn’t do more to reject that message. Others will have to decide for themselves how they handled things.
My big act of rebellion back then was putting a Print Shop sign on the back of my chair reading, “You’d rather walk than ride in this thing.” Kids were less than impressed, and a few teachers chuckled.
School administrators didn’t chuckle when I tried to bequeath my disability in the yearbook to anyone who wanted it because I certainly did not. I forgot about it as fast as I filled out the yearbook form. Sometime later I was told the principal rejected my submission, but that I could re-do it. I didn’t bother. It was more fun knowing he’d gotten his panties in a bunch. Earlier in the year, I got to see the inside of his office when another kid with a disability hit me from behind with his crutch. Apparently, I’d busted his chops too much on the bus. The principal hauled us into his office to wag his finger at us. He didn’t quite explain to me how getting hit from behind and never retaliating (mostly because people jumped between us) was me “having a fight.” Basically, the school wet their collective pants because two disabled students did something other than be good little cripples, and this was their response. I was never much of a fan of his after that.
I
still think my bequeathment was pretty funny for middle school. What awaited in
high school was often less than fun.
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