Dog Girl- A Story About Bullying

Before I entered the main hallway of Ellison Middle School in 1971 as an eighth grader, I thought my shag haircut was cool. I wanted to look like Shirley Jones, the mom in The Partridge Family television show. And I wasn't terribly concerned about the speed at which my breasts were developing; I hurried them along as quickly as I could with the aid of training bras. My mother asked me what I was training when I ask her for one. Mostly, they served as containers for the Kleenex I filled them with. I loved my mother and spent a lot of time with her, not because she made me, I wanted to. She'd spent much of my childhood very ill and in the hospital, so I wanted to redeem every second that was lost. I smoked cigarettes, but only the ones with pretty decorations on the filters. They were called "Eve" and I preferred menthol. I thought smoking automatically made me a part of the cool kids so when I lit up in the girl's bathroom with all the other girls, I expected acceptance.

I did not look like any of the other girls, but I didn't think it would invite rage and contempt. My hair wasn't long and parted in the middle, I didn't wear dungarees that dragged on the ground, I wasn't ready for make-out parties and drinking Boone's Farm Apple Wine until I puked on the front lawn.

The first time I hit the concrete floor because a locker door was opened suddenly in my face was surely an accident. The kid said he was sorry, even though he was laughing. And the first time I walked onto the school bus and the entire bus began to bark and howl like dogs, I looked behind me to see if a dog followed me onto the bus. And then I realized they were barking at me. A foot shot out into the aisle and I fell, spilling the contents of the pretty new purse I got from the five and dime onto the floor. As I gathered my books and my makeup and the piece of toast I was saving for a morning snack, I felt the wet splatter of someone's spit on the back of my neck.

"SIDDOWN!!" the driver yelled at me. "We can't move until you siddown!" I tried to find an empty seat, blinded by tears and finally located one next to a fat girl. I was so skinny that I fit next to her even though she almost took up the whole seat. I held onto the side of the seat for dear life so I wouldn't slide off.

Of course I cried. I thought crying would let the kids know that they were causing me great pain and humiliation and that they would then stop. But it seemed they enjoyed watching me fall apart so they turned up the volume on the barking and howling. Each time I entered a classroom or got on the bus, the herd of bullies mobilized and descended on me to tear me to pieces. "Ugly dog! You SUCK!" shouted the boys. "Fucking ugly flat-chested DOG! You're so ugly you should kill yourself so we wouldn't have to look at you!!!"

How I wished I could die. I thought of how sorry they would be if I died. I imagined them all standing around my coffin as it was lowered into the ground. And sometimes, in the tiny moments I felt angry instead of sad and desperately lonely, I imagined all of them lined up in a row as I walked down the line slapping each of their faces as hard as I could while they were made to stand there and take their due punishment.

I went to the school counselor's office to tell her what was happening. None of the teachers stopped it other than to say something like, "Settle down and let's open our textbooks to page 197." The counselor gave me very helpful advice which was to ignore them. "Remember...sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." If only I could have understood how not to be hurt not just by mass rejection, but by being someone so deserving of hatred. How did I become so easy to hate? Was it my hair? My pants? The shape of my nose or the fact that I loved my mommy and it wasn't cool to love your parents back in 1971?

I began to throw up in the morning. My mother rose up against the principal and the school truant officers who began to call and come to the house when I couldn't bear to go to school anymore, threatening to put me in juvenile detention. "She's not going to your school because it's a horrible place and I intend to sue you for every cent you've got," she would shout from behind the kitchen door. She was weakened by years of illness, depressed over being left for a younger woman by my father, and addicted to narcotics. She was still strong enough to be my most ardent and fierce protector, but didn't always handle these kinds of situations with the acuity and effectiveness she once would have. But she was all I had. She sheltered me and told me we would just sneak away to a place where I would never have to face those kids again.

I knew we couldn't just sneak away. And I knew they would be back the next day if I didn't go to school. So I just threw up and then got on the bus hoping I wouldn't throw up again before we got there. So I stopped eating breakfast. And I stopped eating lunch in the cafeteria, because the whole cafeteria barked at me, so I found a rarely used bathroom next to the gym in which to eat my lunch and smoke one of the pretty cigarettes I brought in my skirt pocket.

One day, I was bracing myself to enter math class and endure yet another round of barking and being told how pathetic my breasts were and how my face was so ugly that it made a dog's asshole look beautiful and one of the worst offenders came out to the hall where he saw me hyperventilating and leaning against the wall.

"We just wanted you to know how sorry we are for the way we have been treating you," he said smiling. "And we have a gift for you." Silly me. I thought maybe they were going to give me some flowers or maybe a box of candy. He took me by the hand and I blushed as if I'd just been asked to dance. And we entered the classroom where I was presented with a large box of Milk Bone dog biscuits. I looked desperately to the teacher to protect me as the eruption of barking became deafening, but he too was laughing, unable to contain himself. I wasn't one of his favorites because I was always behind, confused, dazed and drowning, afraid to ask for help.

So I disappeared into a dark place inside myself. We did move away and I never bothered to enroll in ninth grade. I crossed the street whenever I saw teenagers and carried that fear with me into adulthood. I returned to school halfway through my tenth grade year but dropped out again at the age of sixteen, unable to tolerate my chronic anxiety. By that time, I had developed a strong phobia of schools in general and was so far behind that I felt I would never catch up anyway.

My mother died two weeks after I turned sixteen and I found myself on my own shortly thereafter. My father chose his girlfriend when she gave him the ultimatum, "It's her or me." If not for a few people only a few years older than me who helped me grow comfortable in my battered and thin skin, I might never have survived adolescence. And when I learned to see beauty in my uniqueness as I once had before Ellison Middle School, I decided I could return to school and make up for what was lost. I discovered that my peers celebrated differences much more than they did in middle school and high school. Gradually, I was able to enter a classroom without acute nausea and a racing heart.

When my children went to school and were subjected to bullying and teasing, it was difficult for me not to react with all the pain and rage I once felt as a newly minted adolescent. But I did not half-consciously say stupid shit like, "Oh just ignore them...remember...sticks and stones..." I went to the school and sat down with my children and the principals and teacher and the bullies if I could manage to get them in the same room with me, and with the warrior bursting in my heart, I refused to tolerate it. Not for one second.

When adults create a hostile work environment by harassing other employees, it is grounds for termination. It should be no different in a school, where learning was once considered almost a sacred privilege. Adults in this culture do not do the best job of modeling celebration of diversity particularly in the corporate, military and educational systems. The archetype of Destroyer is invading our most fragile population and we cannot afford to be passive in bringing the Destroyer to peace. This is the responsibility of every child, every parent and every teacher who sees predatory behavior being perpetrated on another child.