I realized when I went to my 10 yr. reunion that I made poor choices in choosing my friends. The only people I was interested in were not my close friends in HS but were acquaintances, classmates--kids I had most of my classes with. If I had it to do all over again I would have done it oh so much differently. Who wouldn't? I regret not trying harder to make the basketball team (I LOVED basketball, still do). I would have applied myself more, not f*&#ed around so much. When are they going to build that time machine anyway? College was my favorite time of schooling, junior high the worst (by far) and high school, I just wandered through.

Poor me! (pathetic)

I agree - oh the things I could do if I'd only known in High School (and Jr. High) what I know now.

And you're right J.D., children, especially teenagers, can be cruel and thoughtless individuals (not all of them, but some of them).

Dale was in my 3rd or 4th grade class (like JD, my memory is also getting foggy).

The whole class was invited to his birthday party that year. Those who could attend piled in the back of Dale's Mom's station wagon and went to Farrell's for ice cream.

On the way back, one of the boys (Chris) was teasing Dale, and ended up hitting him. This of course caused Dale to start crying and quite a drama ensued.

Being one of Dale's friends, I was quite upset at what Chris had done. The next day at recess, I ran across the playground and tackled him. A teacher quickly broke us up and sent us to the principal's office, but I felt I had sufficiently defended my friend.

In later years, however; I didn't stand up for Dale. In 6th grade, our class was watching a movie in the music room, and the popular, athletic guys were throwing wads of paper at him, trying to get them down the back of his pants. Whenever Dale would turn around, they would blame anyone sitting near them. I just didn't have the guts to turn in the cool kids, even though I was one of the people getting blamed by them.

These same guys went on to be stars of a high school football team the almost made it to the state championship. I get incredibly angry when I think about that - why did these popular, athletic kids need to pick on someone like Dale?

Looking back on it now, it reminds me a lot of the book "Lord of the Flies".

I remember Tony! He would walk through Lower B and out to the parking lot singing "We built this city!" and the entire hallway full of kids would join in. Sometimes, he would have a small, black tape player on his shoulder playing the tune.
I don't remember Dale. But the story makes me sad. I remember times when I didn't stick up for other kids. I also remember one time that I did. On the bus, a group of girls always picked on one smaller girl. They would trip her as she got off at her stop or push her or throw things at her. One day, since I got off at the same stop, I grabbed one of the girls by the front of the shirt and told her to pick on someone her own size. I don't know what came over me. I became a bully at that moment! And that smaller, younger girl became my new, best, bus-friend for the rest of the year.

I don't know if you boys are aware of it, J.D. and Jeff, but I have been fairly good friends with Dale's mother Judy over the years and she has told me how much she appreciated the way you treated Dale, and especially the time Jeff got in the fight sticking up for him. I have some pretty fierce thoughts about the boys that were throwing the wads of paper at Dale and wound up being the Canby High football stars -- I'll just say (and I hope I don't get in too much trouble) that football players don't always have the reputation of being admired or noted for their intelligence. And obviously not, in this case, for their compassion. I was real proud of you for what you did that day, Jeff, even though you got in trouble, and I still am. And I feel similarly about J.D., reading his thoughts here.

What brought this topic up?
I do not remember even having ‘special needs’ children at our school. Maybe it was the schools I went to (we did move around a lot). In junior high, I had a midget as a classmate. He was nice, lived down the street however I cannot remember his name. I do remember a boy making some smart-ass remark as the midget was climbing on the bus, but multiple people told him to shut it.
The midget was one of the best skateboarders in my class.

What brought this topic up?

You'll be sorry you asked, but...

As I was ripping my CD collection into iTunes yesterday, I noticed Starship's "We Built This City" on an Entertainment Weekly premium CD. I started singing it. The song always reminds me of Tony, so I told Kris about him. Then I decided to jot down the bit about him, and that led to my memories of Dale.

I have memories of other, similar kids, but they're either ill-defined or they lack names. For example, when we were in the Mormon church there was a kid with Downs Syndrome named Kallie. He was the first retarded — or "special needs" — kid I ever knew. He fascinated me. But there's very little to say about him other than that.

Aren't you glad you asked? :)

I heard not too long ago that the old belief that bullies have low self-esteem often isn't true, but that actually most bullies have excellent self-esteem. I'm not sure what the correlation with these kinds of incidents as related on this blog page would be, but maybe it has something to do with how we define (and possibly value) self-esteem in our society. Perhaps those who have empathy for the difficulties and pain of others are considered weak, while those who might be looked at as the predators of society are seen as being strong? To me, that would be erroneous, because I think the true strength is in kindness. Just some thoughts . . . I'll shut up now. -G-

I'm currently in classes for Master of Arts in Teaching and I read a journal article in which the authors researched this particular topic of bullies/victims and self-esteem. Basically, they found that bullies initially begin bullying because their self worth is low. They often get rewarded (laughs, cheers from other students) for their bullying activities. Even though they are often victims themselves at home (bullied by parent, brother, etc.) the reinforcement they get from bullying others increases their self worth and they continue the process. Victims, however, often begin with low self worth, which does nothing but get worse as the bullying increases. The authors felt that as long as teachers treated bullying as an individual problem (bully vs victim) it will never be conquered. It is a social problem. The peer group is supporting the activity by laughing or by simply not speaking up and discouraging future bullying. Negative response decreases the self worth of the bully, whereby the bullying activities cease. In theory, anyhow.

That makes a lot more sense to me, Lynn.

Wow. I just wrote something along these very lines on my weblog and then come over here to see a very similar problem being discused. It's funny how often this happens!