I remember every last one of my bullies, vividly. I remember their names and will gladly repeat them. I remember their cruel "Hurr hurr hurr"s, the dimwitted delight they took in calling me crude names and scientifically dosing me with just enough pain to hurt but not enough to get them in serious trouble if they got caught. Their foundationless hatred. Their henchmanliness.
My dad moved us to tiny Malad, Idaho in August 1974. He taught fifth grade and I started fourth. (See my earlier dictionary story.) In a town this small and insular, because I hadn't been born there and wasn't related to any locals, I was "the new kid" until mid-high school. One unbreakable law of the children's jungle is: The new kid will be bullied--so I was. I had this odd last name, too, and it proved irresistible to bullies' twisted creativity. "Brian Cauliflower," of course. Also "Collie-dog." The cruder, less religious ones opted for "Cowlishit" or "Cow-shit." One asshole with a little imagination came up with "Captain Caveman," which to be honest I didn't mind; but that one didn't stick. They were all a year or two older than me; I was invisible to kids older than that, and unharassed by those my own age. Barry Daniels, Steve Daniels, Todd Hess, Shawn Thomas, Steve Sweeten, and Jerry Steiner: they grinned like chimps and lobbed ugly names every damn time they spotted me--between classes, at church (!), at Boy Scouts (which I already hated), at sports practice. The namecalling was like the skies in Seattle: forever looming, liable to pour down anytime, not exactly deadly but nothing you'd choose to get caught in, either.
Then there were the bullies who got physical. I remember like it was this week: I'm in fourth grade, it's winter, there is slushy snow outside, and I am in Jax Snax across the street from the Elementary playing pinball. I'm really killing it, too, and it's about to "pop"--to make this loud BANG! alerting everyone around that I've just earned a free game. I am as bad-ass as a new kid who likes books and cats can ever be. The jukebox is playing "I Shot the Sheriff," Eric Clapton's version, and...yeah, baby, I shot the sheriff.
Now there is this BAM! sudden horrible pain in my earlobe. I lose the ball in play. I pull back the plunger for the final one, let it loose, and BAM! that pain again. Turning quickly, I see it's a high school boy I don't even know. He has flipped my ear with his index finger as hard as he can, wound up and let loose. He's a senior, I think, and he's chewing tobacco and wearing boots and a cowboy hat, and his grownup farm-worked body can focus an awful lot of ouch per square inch onto a little boy's flipped earlobe. It glowed and smarted the rest of the day.
Paul Evans was a special kind of bullying asshole--the kind that never lets up. I stupidly chose to play football my ninth-grade year, though I hated the constant smashing and bruising. I just wanted to daydream and read my books, which that year included the "All Creatures Great and Small" veterinary memoirs. I wanted to belong, and sports helped a lot with that. So. I remember desperately thinking, during an extraordinarily hot and unpleasant August practice: "This practice will be over in an hour. An hour isn't that long, really. I can stand an hour. Then it will be done. That time will pass. Look, a minute just passed while I was thinking about this." Because I was shooting up like a skinny weed, the coaches thought I'd make a good tight end. So they had us ninth-graders scrimmage play after play against the tenth-graders. I was permanently assigned to block their defensive end, Paul Evans. He did this filthy thing on every snap: he'd hop a step back, or to the side, and grab my shoulderpads, and throw me to the ground. I'd earnestly try as instructed to make contact and move him: skip, whump! He didn't even try to get involved in the play--all his focus was laser-locked on getting me to the ground. I tried not blocking, just holding my position; coach would yell. I tried holding him; coach yelled and called a penalty. In desperation I tried throwing myself into his knees; Paul just backed out of the way and laughed out loud. Play after play, set-hut-skip-whump. No coach ever intervened--I believe their sentiment was, You're going to face this kind of thing in real games, so buck the fuck up, cowboy.
Marty Thorpe usually limited himself to calling me "Cow-shit," but one snowy day on the elementary playground he decided to try his wrestling moves on me. He strode right over and asked me if I knew what a "half-Nelson" was. Gee, no. Did I know what a "whole Nelson" was? Nope. Turns out he was dying to show me. Now, he knew he was going to grab me, that was his plan from the beginning. But I never saw it coming. Before I could react, he captured my head in his elbow, planted a foot between mine, and jerked me straight to the gravel-packed slush. With my head still under his arm and his whole weight on me. He added his other arm to make the full Nelson.
He held that until my vision went fuzzy like a TV station that wouldn't come in and I went limp. Then he contemptuously shoved me off, got up, and stalked away. I sat in the snow for a few minutes waiting, but the fuzziness wouldn't dissipate. My head ached and my pants were soaked. I staggered over to the teacher on duty--which by the way, where the hell had she been all this time?!--and she took me inside to the school nurse. Marty saw me an hour later, as I left the nurse to return to class, and he asked me straight away whether I'd "told on him." No, I hadn't--and thought, but didn't add, Because I'm not a complete idiot. Another law of the children's jungle: You never ever ever snitch, because you will only be bullied worse. He seemed relieved. Maybe he was. Maybe that's why he never bullied me again.
Being bullied accretes fear, and shame, and impotent rage. They eventually require some kind of release. Twice I tried to exorcise all the ugliness by doing some bullying myself. That both incidents happened during ninth-grade football season probably indicates how horrible that whole atmosphere was.
On a bus to Hyrum, where we were to play an eight-grade game and then a ninth-grade game, I had the perfect bullying target sitting right in front of me. William Jaussi (pronounced "Yow-zee"). He was a year younger than me, the stringiest of beans, with a beaky nose and protruding ears. No one thought he was cool; in fact, his whole family was off-putting and weird. "Everyone knew" for example that one of his older sisters had crapped her pants on a pep band bus. I probably said something obnoxious about his name, but what I remember clearly is, two or three times, thinking to pass on the same shock and pain I'd felt, I wound up and flipped his ears. As hard as I could. Just like that asshole cowboy. I attempted a triumphant laugh; it faltered and died.
One day at football practice, Ed Robbins, the eighth grade's running back, was beating the ninth grade's defense on every play. He was small and fast and slippery, and he kept zipping past us for what would be touchdowns. I was playing defensive end--straight up, not trying to throw the tight end down on each snap--and was rapidly becoming fed up with the little bastard. So the next time the eighth-graders sent the ball around my end, I was prepared. I let Ed get around and about half a step past me; then, as planned, I grabbed his facemask and yanked downward. I didn't even try to disguise it or pretend it was an accident.
Ed's dad was one of the coaches, and he quite rightly yelled in my face for a few minutes. He didn't know it was unnecessary. I was already feeling a little queasy and a lot ashamed of myself. I listened and nodded.
My dad moved us to tiny Malad, Idaho in August 1974. He taught fifth grade and I started fourth. (See my earlier dictionary story.) In a town this small and insular, because I hadn't been born there and wasn't related to any locals, I was "the new kid" until mid-high school. One unbreakable law of the children's jungle is: The new kid will be bullied--so I was. I had this odd last name, too, and it proved irresistible to bullies' twisted creativity. "Brian Cauliflower," of course. Also "Collie-dog." The cruder, less religious ones opted for "Cowlishit" or "Cow-shit." One asshole with a little imagination came up with "Captain Caveman," which to be honest I didn't mind; but that one didn't stick. They were all a year or two older than me; I was invisible to kids older than that, and unharassed by those my own age. Barry Daniels, Steve Daniels, Todd Hess, Shawn Thomas, Steve Sweeten, and Jerry Steiner: they grinned like chimps and lobbed ugly names every damn time they spotted me--between classes, at church (!), at Boy Scouts (which I already hated), at sports practice. The namecalling was like the skies in Seattle: forever looming, liable to pour down anytime, not exactly deadly but nothing you'd choose to get caught in, either.
Then there were the bullies who got physical. I remember like it was this week: I'm in fourth grade, it's winter, there is slushy snow outside, and I am in Jax Snax across the street from the Elementary playing pinball. I'm really killing it, too, and it's about to "pop"--to make this loud BANG! alerting everyone around that I've just earned a free game. I am as bad-ass as a new kid who likes books and cats can ever be. The jukebox is playing "I Shot the Sheriff," Eric Clapton's version, and...yeah, baby, I shot the sheriff.
Paul Evans was a special kind of bullying asshole--the kind that never lets up. I stupidly chose to play football my ninth-grade year, though I hated the constant smashing and bruising. I just wanted to daydream and read my books, which that year included the "All Creatures Great and Small" veterinary memoirs. I wanted to belong, and sports helped a lot with that. So. I remember desperately thinking, during an extraordinarily hot and unpleasant August practice: "This practice will be over in an hour. An hour isn't that long, really. I can stand an hour. Then it will be done. That time will pass. Look, a minute just passed while I was thinking about this." Because I was shooting up like a skinny weed, the coaches thought I'd make a good tight end. So they had us ninth-graders scrimmage play after play against the tenth-graders. I was permanently assigned to block their defensive end, Paul Evans. He did this filthy thing on every snap: he'd hop a step back, or to the side, and grab my shoulderpads, and throw me to the ground. I'd earnestly try as instructed to make contact and move him: skip, whump! He didn't even try to get involved in the play--all his focus was laser-locked on getting me to the ground. I tried not blocking, just holding my position; coach would yell. I tried holding him; coach yelled and called a penalty. In desperation I tried throwing myself into his knees; Paul just backed out of the way and laughed out loud. Play after play, set-hut-skip-whump. No coach ever intervened--I believe their sentiment was, You're going to face this kind of thing in real games, so buck the fuck up, cowboy.
Marty Thorpe usually limited himself to calling me "Cow-shit," but one snowy day on the elementary playground he decided to try his wrestling moves on me. He strode right over and asked me if I knew what a "half-Nelson" was. Gee, no. Did I know what a "whole Nelson" was? Nope. Turns out he was dying to show me. Now, he knew he was going to grab me, that was his plan from the beginning. But I never saw it coming. Before I could react, he captured my head in his elbow, planted a foot between mine, and jerked me straight to the gravel-packed slush. With my head still under his arm and his whole weight on me. He added his other arm to make the full Nelson.
Being bullied accretes fear, and shame, and impotent rage. They eventually require some kind of release. Twice I tried to exorcise all the ugliness by doing some bullying myself. That both incidents happened during ninth-grade football season probably indicates how horrible that whole atmosphere was.
On a bus to Hyrum, where we were to play an eight-grade game and then a ninth-grade game, I had the perfect bullying target sitting right in front of me. William Jaussi (pronounced "Yow-zee"). He was a year younger than me, the stringiest of beans, with a beaky nose and protruding ears. No one thought he was cool; in fact, his whole family was off-putting and weird. "Everyone knew" for example that one of his older sisters had crapped her pants on a pep band bus. I probably said something obnoxious about his name, but what I remember clearly is, two or three times, thinking to pass on the same shock and pain I'd felt, I wound up and flipped his ears. As hard as I could. Just like that asshole cowboy. I attempted a triumphant laugh; it faltered and died.
One day at football practice, Ed Robbins, the eighth grade's running back, was beating the ninth grade's defense on every play. He was small and fast and slippery, and he kept zipping past us for what would be touchdowns. I was playing defensive end--straight up, not trying to throw the tight end down on each snap--and was rapidly becoming fed up with the little bastard. So the next time the eighth-graders sent the ball around my end, I was prepared. I let Ed get around and about half a step past me; then, as planned, I grabbed his facemask and yanked downward. I didn't even try to disguise it or pretend it was an accident.
