When I was in first grade in school I was very often bullied by a boy in my class. Everyone, including the teachers, were afraid of him. Even though pretty short and skinny, he was ridiculously strong and he got insanely angry for very puny reasons. Of course I was one of these kids who detest when some people try to rule others by violence and thus I was very often the target of this kid.
I have to admit that I was terribly afraid of him. He could hit you so hard it was insane, and very often he just didn't stop at one stroke when he started, no he just continued, almost as if he went berserk.
So some time passed and I hated this kids guts. I often thought he was mean and stupid and should just die. As the kid I was I believed he had always been like that, like some kids are born mean while others are not.
Until I saw something that is forever engraved in my soul.
Now, this kid was playing ice hockey and the rink was just on the way home from school for me. One day, as I was passing by pretty late in the evening, I stumbled across this kid being picked up from practice by his father.
I, of course, ducked behind a bush, not wanting to be spotted by the devil himself and decided to wait out in hiding until they had left. However, they didn't leave, instead the father took the sons gear and threw it in the trunk of his car and then he started bashing his kid verbally. How bad he had been in practice, how stupid he was and how he failed in everything he did. The more the father said the louder his voice became until he was almost screaming, as his vocabulary was turning cruder and cruder. In the mean time his son was just standing there being verbally abused, looking at his feet. Then, suddenly, out of the blue the father slaps his son so hard in the face that the kid just falls like a brick to the ground.
Needless to say, I was shocked out of my eyes. My parents have never ever put their hands on me and in the country I grew up in, child abuse is a very serious offence.
So as I was cowering in the bush, overlooking this scene, it suddenly struck my childish mind that MY bully was being bullied in return. Yet, I absolutely didn't feel any triumph whatsoever, just horror and sadness. For despite being mean and violent this kid had absolutely not deserved to be treated like this by his father. Especially by his father.
Then, even worse, the kid just happens to look in my direction and he sees me. His eyes lock to mine and I can see the shame and horror in them. The utter desperation that someone else have seen this scene. Seen him like this, on the ground, beaten by his father.
So I scrambled to my feet and ran as fast as I could away form there. If it was for my sake or his I still do not know, but I was just a child and the entire episode scared me enormously.
The day after he came into the classroom with a blue eye and I realised acutely that, what everyone else assumed to be bruises form training hockey, was in fact bruises from his fathers hands. And it had been so for a long, long time. In that moment, I could feel nothing but pity for the boy that could do nothing against his father so instead he took out his frustrations and fears on other kids.
As school ended that day I wanted to tell him something that would be a comfort, but what do you say? What can a kid say? So I tried my best...I gathered my tiny courage, walked up to him, looked him straight in the eye and was just about to tell him that it was OK and that I was not going to tell anyone, when he gave me right hook straight in the face.
In my newly discovered facts and feelings I had forgotten that HE had not changed anything. All he knew was that I had seen him in his hour of disgrace and he probably thought I was going to make fun of him for it.
So I found myself being violently bashed, repeatedly, by this kid until I was almost unconscious. Never once did I try to hit him back (which I usually did...) because I just couldn't make myself do it. I felt too sorry for him.
The last thing I remember, before I blacked out, was him sitting on top of me, still bashing me with a crazy look in his eyes and tears rolling down his face. I don't know if he knew he was crying or not, but this scene is forever burnt into my retina.
I woke up much later on the school yard and dragged myself home. I must have looked horrendous because my mother screamed in terror when I came in. She tried to coax out of me who did it but I just told her I didn't know - that they had jumped me from behind.
It took me 4 days to go back to school.
As I entered the classroom, he looked me straight in the eye, across the room, as if to ask “Why? Why didn't you tell it was me?”
and I just looked back, as if to tell him it was OK. Then he looked away.
That was the last time he ever hit me again. Or even teased me. Or talked to me.
He would sometimes look at me with this quizzical look, when he thought I didn't know, but every time I would catch his eyes he would look away as if embarrassed.
He quit school that year and moved to another school. I heard later that he got into a bad crowd and never finished high school. Then a few years ago I heard from an acquaintance that he had taken his own life.
This story always makes my heart ache. For the abused child he was, for the lost adult he became and for my own uselessness in it all. Many times, later on, I have thought that maybe there was something I could have done, something I could have said that would have made a difference. Maybe if I could have gathered up my courage and tried to speak to him again it could have changed? Maybe if he had had a friend like me, he could have changed?
But I was just 7 years old. I didn't know what to do, it was too big for me, too complicated. And maybe I didn't want to take the responsibility, maybe I couldn't.
Today, I am not a child anymore. I still do not know what I could have done or could do today, if I would come across something similar. BUT I do know that today, I would try harder.
For the lesson of this story is forever engraved in me.
That,
NO child is born mean.
NO child is born knowing hate. They are taught it.
Therefore, YOU should never judge a child, or any person, based only on his external behaviour.
Instead, find out what lies behind it.
And maybe, just maybe you could do something about it...before it is too late.
