Bullies

Only one thing makes them stop

Leo stands up for himself in a battle of wits with a rock. Border Route Trail, BWCA, September 2020.

I was born in Littleton, New Hampshire. Over the next 18 years, my little family unit lived in six different places in three different states. My dad was in the US Forest Service. I was a Forest Service brat. Kind of like a military brat, but with more trees. There were a lot of positives from growing up all over the country. But let’s focus on the negative.

I was constantly the new kid. That meant I was constantly bullied. I was fresh meat in the prison yard. In second grade we ate our lunches at our desks. I saw a girl eating food at her desk and I thought, “Wow, that girl’s lunch is just like the one Mom made for me.” I lifted the top of my desk and my lunch was missing. I confronted her about it, but she said that lunch was hers. I was a bad interrogator. I fed her the answers.

“You’re telling me you had a ham sandwich?” I asked.

“Yup.”

“And an orange juice?”

“Uh huh.”

“Your mom made you a whoopie pie?” I asked. Now I had her. Nobody knows what a whoopie pie is.

“A what?”

“A whoopie pie. It’s like a giant oreo.”

“Oh. Yeah, my mom made me that, too.”

Later, on the playground, it slowly dawned on me that she was full of it, as well as full of my lunch.

I went to that same elementary school on a bus. I waited at a bus stop that was a block from my house. There was a fourth-grader named Todd who tortured me every day. He made me eat dirt. He shoved snow down the back of my jacket. It seemed like he was twice as big as me, a lowly second-grader. When I went to the bus stop, I hid in a little nook in the wall to avoid detection. It only delayed the inevitable by a couple minutes.

One night, I was so afraid, I couldn’t sleep. I went down the stairs and saw my dad reading a book in a chair. I told him that this kid Todd was making me eat dirt at the bus stop. He told me to go back to bed. I felt abandoned. Then the weirdest thing happened. The next day, Todd invited me to walk to school with him instead of taking the bus. I did, since I felt like I had no choice as his hostage. I honestly thought he was going to shove me in a culvert. Instead, he was nice to me the whole way. He acted like we were two buddies on an adventure, playing hooky from the school bus. The bullying stopped from that point forward.

I called my dad just now and asked him if he remembered me asking for help. He said no. But he said that if I told him that a kid was making me eat dirt, he definitely would’ve done something about it. I can’t imagine Todd would’ve done such a quick 180 without parental intervention. I suspect my dad must’ve stood up for me and called Todd’s parents. Especially considering the strange way that Todd abruptly decided to leave me alone after months of daily torment.

Three more new towns after that. Three more cycles of being the new kid. I responded in what appeared to be a healthy way. But my response was powered by rage. I decided to get better grades than all of them. I used academic performance like a club. I felt like DeNiro’s Max Cady character in Cape Fear when he overpowers some thugs that were hired to beat him up:

“I ain't no white trash piece of shit. I'm better than you all! I can out-learn you. I can out-read you. I can out-think you. And I can out-philosophize you. And I'm gonna outlast you. You think a couple whacks to my guts is gonna get me down?”

Perfect grades didn’t make a difference. After our last move, I got bullied as a junior in high school. I wasn’t even new anymore. But suddenly, a freshman football player was hassling me. At first, I thought he was pulling my leg. Where does a freshman get off bullying me? After several weeks of it, I finally had enough. By then, in my sixth town, I knew how bullies worked.

I was running by myself near the high school, finishing a team run. This freshman was walking toward me. I knew he wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut. I was ready.

He started an insult with, “Hey, you—”

I got into his face and screamed profanities at the top of my lungs that included a warning that, if he ever spoke a single word to me ever again, I was going to beat the ever-loving shit out of him. He never spoke to me again.

It didn’t matter that I was smarter than the bullies. It didn’t matter if I was better at sports. It didn’t matter that I got better grades. It didn’t matter that I tried to deflect with humor. Only one thing worked: Standing up to them. I told them I was not going to put up with their bullshit. I applied this lesson in two more scenarios before I left home for college.

Thanks to my childhood, I have a finely tuned bully detector. Bullies are in charge of our government now. And they will not stop. You think you’re tired now? You think you can’t keep track of the tsunami of bullshit now? Just wait. I’ll keep saying it until you hear me: There is no bottom. They will gut our democracy until it does not function anymore. They are gutting it as we speak without concern for the rule of law or the Constitution. This week, the Vice President of the United States said they shouldn’t comply with the decisions of the judiciary. Of course, that’s only true when the judiciary tries to prevent them from criming. Just like elections, the system works fine… but only when it goes their way.

This is a critical time. Use your voice. Try to remember that bullies are spineless jellyfish. They’re cowards. They’re counting on your silence. Tell your elected officials that you’ve had enough with the illegal and unconstitutional acts that are taking place. If your elected official is one of the bullies, call them to let them know you’ve had enough. If your elected official is not a bully, call and tell them to stand up to those that are.

It's uncomfortable, but we have to stand up to them. It’s the only thing that works. Timothy Snyder lists something in his book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century that we should all heed: #20: Be as courageous as you can. If we are courageous, the bullies will fold, as bullies always do. If we lose courage and remain silent, it will be the end of the American experiment.

Pro Tip: Get the 5 Calls app

I have recently loaded a phone on my app that makes calling your representatives easy. It’s the 5 Calls app. It makes it easy to call your elected officials in Washington, D.C. I have used it and gotten a real human being to answer. My Congressman ignores pretty much everything I say. Still, one of his young Congressional staffers gets to listen to my calm, civil input. I have read recently that the switchboard in DC is getting 1600 calls…per minute. The normal amount is 40. Keep using your voice. Whether you use this app or not, you can just as easily use the phone numbers and email addresses for your representatives and senators you find elsewhere. Contact them. It only takes a couple minutes.

Border Route Trail, BWCA. September 2020.

Call to Action: BWCA

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA) is in my congressional district. I paddle and hike there. My Congressman Rep. Pete Stauber (R-MN08) just introduced a bill with the Orwellian name The Superior National Forest Restoration Act (H.R. 978). This bill will allow copper-nickel mining near the BWCA where it was previously forbidden. Contact your elected officials and tell them to oppose this bill. The BWCA is the most heavily visited wilderness area in our whole country. One of the worst parts of the bill is that it forbids judicial review of mine permits and leases. Like the VP’s comments this week about ignoring the judiciary, the bullies are trying to cut out the judicial branch of our government in this bill. This bill affects all Americans, since the BWCA is federal public land. Whether you are from Minnesota or not, tell your Representative to vote NO on H.R. 978.

1000-year-old petroglyphs at North Hegman Lake, BWCA, September 2023.