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The Bully

No era escapes life’s lessons, which takes me to how frequently I find meaningful analogies from my childhood to apply to what disturbs me presently and how persistent are our human patterns regardless of the decade or our age.

In third grade Peter was one of my best friends. I met him through Marilyn, my other best friend. We all lived short bike rides from one another, an exhilarating down hill ride in one direction and a breathless bike push home. Peter was kind and gentle, thin, blue eyed, and hilarious. Our threesome was modified by witty and mannerly Marilyn, who to this day has the demeanor of a fine hostess.

At Hoover Elementary School the rules at last bell were, as today, designed to keep us in order with single file exits, classroom by classroom. Of the event I have never forgotten, on a spring afternoon high with promise — bike rides, freshly baked cookies, sparkling scenery — we filed out of our classrooms toward the front doors. Peter was in front of me. He would be next out the front door. Behind me was The Classroom Bully, an oversized, brash boy who had to be first, had to be noticed.

Suddenly The Bully pushed me from behind into Peter, who instinctually braced  himself, holding his arms straight out toward the doors. In milliseconds Peter crashed through the glass doors. In those days we didn’t have safety glass. The glass shredded Peter’s arms. I fell into him. The Bully stood back obediently holding the line.

“She pushed him!” Yelled The Bully.

I was jerked into the principal’s office and held there. Trembling, I heard the siren of the ambulance. The sight of Peter’s blood spurting and the shattered glass, the screams, the “She pushed  him!” collapsed into a fearful collage.

“Did you push, Peter?”  Asked Mr. Lyons, the principal.

“Yes,”  I murmured. For indeed I had. I was certain I had killed him.

My mother suddenly appeared and kneeled in front of me. “Diane, what happened?”

“Is Peter dead?” I sobbed.

“No, Sweetie. Peter has gone to the hospital. Doctors will fix him. He will be okay.”

“Someone hit me from the back and I pushed Peter into the door.”

Wise mothers learn to discern a truth from a lie. My mother had lots of experience with my fibs. She pulled me into her arms. “Peter will be okay. It’s not your fault.”

The Bully refused to confess even after other children and a teacher described the incident. Mr. Lyons reassured me over and over. “Peter will be okay.”  But my kindly principal could not erase the sinking feeling of my being pushed from behind and accused, singled out and pulled into the principal’s office to await my fate.

Peter was hospitalized for a week and at home for another week. When he returned to school he wore bandages on his arms.   I had agonized for days until I learned he had been released from hospital.  I knew I hadn’t actually caused the incident but I’d been a party to it. Oddly, some part of me today says I was an accomplice, that being an unwitting accomplice doesn’t fully exonerate a person. Our friendship was forever tainted thereafter, for my outsized sense of responsibility just would not fade.

To this day I have a visceral dislike of bullying behaviors, of brash, careless people willing to discard or harm others to maintain narcissistic supremacy.

Still, the adult me wants to know why The Bully was as he was and what happened to him.  Peter, I believe, matured successfully.  But what of The Bully whose name I forgot long ago, like pain.

Dishonesty as Disruption

When I was five years old. I told a whopper to my mother in order to save my own skin. I didn’t wish to be a lesser person in her eyes so the whopper was absolutely necessary — under the circumstances. 
The situation began honestly enough when I twisted a simple fact into an alternative one. In my kindergarten class when someone had a birthday, our teacher Mrs Alexander would ask, Does anyone have a birthday today?”  Up went Jimmy’s eager hand, and then mine. Jimmy was turning six that day, one year to the date of his fifth birthday. I was however simply one day older. 
“Are you sure,?” asked Mrs Alexander, giving me a gracious out. 
Here was my big chance to bow out, to admit I was just kidding. Or confused. Or looking for attention. “Yes.  Today is my birthday.  I’m six. ”  I almost convinced myself; if I could wish it, it could be true. 
So both Jimmy and I received 28 paper birthday cakes crayon colored by our classmates to take home. 
Hoover Elementary School was four blocks from my home. When Kindergarten ended at noon, Mrs Alexander released us into the hall with smiles and hugs. I avoided her eyes as I left class with the paper cakes heavy in my cloth tote bag.  I walked down the 20 plus steps to the school parking lot,  crossed the street to a sidewalk along a shaded avenue, dawdled alongside the ivy covered chain link fence securing the Whiteside family estate, and climbed  the 30 steps up to Alvarado Avenue. As my feet inevitably moved me closer to home, to lunch and my waiting mother, my mind was at work on an explanation about the paper cakes. 
If I slipped into the alley that ran behind our houses on Alvarado, I could dispose of the papers into a neighbor’s trash can. I stopped at the first trash can and reached into the tote bag.  The papers clung to me like glue.  What if someone sees me and asks what I’m doing?  I’ll keep them a little longer. At the next trash can, I thought again, a little longer. 
Torn between disposing of the paper cakes and fabricating a clever story for Mommy, I walked on, passing one trash can after another until I reached the back gate of our yard. 
One voice said, toss these cakes in the garbage right now!  Another voice said tell Mommy that everyone received 28 crayoned colored birthday cakes that day because Mrs Alexander didn’t want anyone to be left out. 
What a happy, wishful thought!  Everyone with paper cakes. A perfect solution!  Into the yard, through the back door of the basement, up a flight of stairs to the kitchen, I went. 
There was my mother at the kitchen sink preparing lunch. Did I happily hand her the bag and say, Guess what happened today?!  No. I slipped off to my bedroom and set the bag down on my desk. 
“Where’s your school bag?”
My tuna fish sandwich felt like cotton in my mouth. “Mmhh. I’m not sure.”
By the time I’d finished my grapes, Mommy had discovered the school bag and the paper cakes. 
“What’s this?”
“0h nothing.  Just color book cakes. That’s what we did today. Color.”
“Oh, how pretty. Look this one is chocolate!  Oh here’s a nice strawberry cake. This must be lemon. And on she went. Through 28 cakes, admiring each one, but barely noticing mine. 
I was stuck at the table. 
“Who had a birthday?  Today isn’t YOUR birthday “
Here goes, I thought. “Jimmy had a birthday, and Mrs Alexander said it would be nice if everybody had a birthday today so we all colored cakes.”
“Everyone went home with this many cakes?”
“Uh huh.”  
“All that coloring must have taken a long time.”
“Uh huh.”
“All morning?”
“May I be excused?”
“Well, how very thoughtful of Mrs. Alexander. You should save these cakes. They are all so nicely done.”
Like a scarlet badge were those cakes hidden in my dark closet in a paper bag until I could safely dispose of them. 
Of course, in my heart I meant to say, we all need attention and because of that I ended up with a bag full of cakes that felt like hot ugly rocks. That was a fact which stuck in my throat. 
I didn’t get off easily. I still remember the incident as if it were yesterday– words stuck in my throat,  guilt in a bag in the closet. 

How Far?

The waterfall crashing and tumbling over the precipice shimmers in the night like polished silver.  Our shoes sink softly into the trail as we climb through the forest toward the silver light.  I feel the roots across the path underfoot, the rocks, the incline.  We are silent.  The night is not.  
What might be heard in the forest if the waterfall were silent?  I am not dull to the dangers.  A bear.  A sudden drop.  A limb in the face.  Does my companion fear these too but continues forward as I do?  The intrigue of wonderment encourages us.  We are, after all, together, not exactly alone.
If we don’t think about where we are and why, we can absorb every sensation.  We can continue.  We can smell the pines and spruces, feel the tingle of moisture on our faces, hear the power in the falling water.  We can imagine the jagged journey of the river dropping into the valley.  We can trust our feet to carry us safely.
The water’s thrashing, crushing sound reverberates against the stone walls. Our feet slip on slabs of granite.  Water rains down on us.  We shiver.
We have walked how far? How far away from our tent,  our camp stove, the children in their sleeping bags?  
Far enough.  
Led by our senses, we have tasted the air, skirted stiff pine boughs, and reached the edge of the silvery cascade.  
Midnight marks more than the turn of one day to another.  In four hours the sun will change the night scene from mystery to reality, and convert it to memory.  
We turn and retrace some facsimile of our previous trail.  Back to the children, to the campground, to the road that leads to the highway in the valley, to home and all else.
There is a godly balance between from where and whom we come, to where we may go, and to when and whom we must return — and what we may carry with us.

The Swirl

Yesterday I received a letter from a life long friend who said she followed my blog but had noticed my posts were further and further apart.  It’s true I haven’t been posting to my blog.  Not because I’m painting more.  Not because I don’t have anything to say.  If anything, I have too much to say.
When I was teaching, I had a reliable sphere of influence.  As a mother, as a grandmother, as a wife, as a friend, as a member of The Presbyterian Church on State Street, I have felt useful and often influential.  
As I age, I realize my actions and words might be less influential than I would wish.  I no longer have the physical or emotional resources to take in a refugee family, as I once did.  I no longer can lead discussions about Elie Wiesel’s Night or J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for The Barbarians.  I do not have as a disciplinary resource the alternative learning center, time out, or “give me the car keys.”
Instead my resources have become more subtle. I ask myself which businesses reflect reasonable ethics, which entertainers support human rights, which voices advocate for objectivity, which leaders adhere to the Beatitudes.  Everyday, suddenly I’m hyper alert to common choices.
Which movie will we watch?  What will we save our money toward?  To whom will we make charitable contributions? 
What doesn’t work?  Ranting to the dog and my husband.  I did that last night, my hands waving like a maniacal orchestra conductor sitting on a sofa.  A long stem glass of red wine rested on the lamp table near my right hand.  During a climatic flourish of indignation, amid the apogee of symphonic verbiage, my right hand swept the long stem glass into the air, broadcasting swirls of Cabernet Sauvignon into the air, across white and blue plaid sofa cushions, onto the creamy carpet, against the white walls, finally to dribble down the sides of the coffee table.  
Suddenly thrown into action, my husband and I leaped up, running for towels and our Bissell Little Green.  Ollie the dog, our curious audience, cocked his head, disappointed I hadn’t sent a bowl of popcorn flying instead.  We missed the last twenty minutes of the PBS Newshour.
It’s humbling to realize the limited extent of private orchestrations of exasperation, the helplessness of protest, the frustration of moral rectitude, especially when the available lesson is a glass of red wine swirling across the room.  
Ultimately I’m left with the Beatitudes.  I’m accountable to Someone other than myself.  I am encouraged to confess, not to accuse or blame; seek value in all people; advocate for objectivity of truth and love available to all.  It’s the least and the most I can do here from my now clean sofa.  Indeed, I am telling you the truth.