One of the sixth-graders in the altercation in the Lamoni, Iowa, school lunchroom was the son of my family doctor. The other was my son, Jonathan. Both families went to church together every Sunday. It was an awkward situation, to say the least.
It was a fairly typical schoolboy fight. The other boy had deliberately knocked the food off my kid's cafeteria tray. My kid responded by smacking the other boy with the tray. The adults in charge didn't see what started it, but they saw the end of it. Consequently, Jonathan's mother and I were called and told that Jonathan was being suspended for the day.
I knew the other boy. While I liked and trusted his dad, I knew his son was a bullying piece of shit. When I got to the school, I camped out at the assistant principal's office and stayed there for 90 minutes. I did not raise my voice. I just very calmly refused to leave and switch from my position that if he was going to suspend one student for fighting, he should suspend the other.
His main argument was that Jonathan was the only child who was seen. I countered that it takes two to tango, a couple to quarrel, and that the other kid had been bullying my son on his walk home for some time. About halfway through the conversation, the assistant principal said he would look into it but for now Jonathan had to go home.
I needed to get back to work. I said I would be checking in on the matter tomorrow and started to rise.
Then the assistant principal made the remark that caused me to extend the conversation for another 45 minutues:
"You know, if your kid is being bullied on the way home, maybe he should choose another way to walk home."
I sat back down and the lecture began.
I informed him that my son had been given specific instructions about the shortest way home. This was an age where parents were being tormented by news stories of children kidnapped on the way home. Taking a different way home could put my child at risk. It would shorten the time he had after school to get his homework done, do his chores, and have some free time to play before dark. And he was, by the way, the victim in this situation.
It did not matter, I continued, whether any school official had observed the beginning of the fight. The other kid had a reputation for bullying other kids, including his own younger brothers. I could bring witnesses from our church who had seen the big brat in action. My kid was just the one who fought back and got caught. My kid said it was so, and that was that. We had raised him not to lie and he was a lousy liar, anyway, so he usually told the truth. And by the way, if my kid said he was the victim, he was the victim, and telling him to walk another way home --- against the wishes of his parents --- amounted to blaming the victim.
And furthermore, I said, I intend to stay here until I get a promise that the other kid will be suspended for as long as my kid is suspended. Protecting the bullies --- no matter how prominent a doctor their father may be --- is going to end today. Now, if you don't want to discuss it with me, Sir, I said, I can go home and get my son's mother. She has nothing better to do in her life than stand up for her child. She, like any decent mother, is like a mama lion when her child is threatened.
You don't, Sir, want to fuck with my son's mother, I said. She's not nice and calm and medicated like me. She will poke her finger in your chest and rip your chest hair off if you don't do the right thing toward our son. She's crazy that way.
There was a pause while the assistant principal digested this. He got up and excused himself. He did not return, but the principal herself --- a sweet-faced, stout woman who had been there for years and years --- came in and sat down in the assistant principal's chair. She explained that he had some urgent business and that she would be finishing the conversation.
I started to explain the situation to her. She stopped me by raising her hand in a "halt" signal.
"I know your son," she said. "I make it a point to know a little bit about all the children in this school. I don't know him well, but from what I've seen, he's a nice, gentle boy. Maybe a little bit of a loner. But he's not a troublemaker.
"And I also know the other kid and his family. Would you mind shutting the door a minute, Mr. Spires?"
I got up and shut the door and returned to my seat.
"Thank you. The other boy, well, let's just say, he's just like his father was. Maybe a little worse. He's a little piece of shit, if you'll excuse me for putting it that way."
I relaxed. She and I were going to get along just fine. The upshot of the conversation was that Jonathan would finish the day away from home and the other boy would be sent home tomorrow with a letter to his parents explaining his part in the altercation.
And then the principal added, "And your boy should keep walking home the way he always does if that's what you and he want him to do. The school is not responsible, of course, for what happens off the school grounds and he may continue to be bullied. But it's his right and your right to have him take the route you request. It was wrong of the assistant principal to suggest otherwise.
"We do not approve of bullies at our school, but there is only so much we can do about them. I can assure you that bullying will not be tolerated at the school, however, and you and your son can speak to me about any such incidents anytime."
I could see why she was the principal and why she had held onto her job for two generations.
That was when Jonathan was in the sixth grade, back in the early 1990s. He's now 27 and so is the other boy, if someone hasn't killed him in a drive-by shooting or if he hasn't been a victim of friendly fire in his own military platoon. It was a transitional time in public awareness of bullying. When I went through similar problems in the sixth grade, I was told by both my father and teachers that such experiences were a part of growing up for all boys and I should "man up" and learn to fight back.
Nowadays, in the aftermath of the Columbine High School school massacre and other such incidents resulting, in part, from kids snapping after being bullied by other kids, bullying is less tolerated by school officials and parents alike. With one exception.
The conservative propaganda machine Fox News, of all places, reported today that gay and lesbian teens are still bullied more than heterosexual kids. It reports a
new study shows these adolescents get bullied two to three times more than their heterosexual peers.
The Fox report notes that while the researchers aren't sure why this sexual minority gets bullied more than others or the type of bullying, which can include various verbal insults and physical assaults, they suggest in general those who are different from the social norm are often bully targets. Whatever the cause, the researchers say, the results have implications for parents and schools alike.
"Students, parents, schools and community organizations can work to create environments that are supportive and accepting of all students, regardless of their sexual orientation," said lead study author Dr. Elise Berlan, a physician in Adolescent Medicine at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio and faculty member at Ohio State University. "Schools, in particular, need to work to increase the awareness of bullying."
The research adds to accumulating results on the topic of bullying, with studies showing kids who bully at school are more likely to do the same at home; workplace bullying can wreak havoc at the office and is worse than sexual harassment; and key nonverbal cues could identify children who are likely to be bullied and rejected by others.
The new results also suggest older kids are still vulnerable to bullies, even though past studies have shown the prevalence of bullying declines after middle-school years. Fox reports that lesbians and gays were the least likely to bully others, with none of the girls who identified as lesbian saying they had bullied others in the previous year.
The data analyzed by Berlan and her colleagues came from 2001 information collected in an ongoing study of American teens, which included more than 7,500 adolescents, ages 14 to 22. The participants were children of female registered nurses who took part in the Nurses' Health Study II, and they may not be representative of the general population. The results are published online in the January issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.
Of the male teens, about 0.5 percent identified themselves as bisexual, 1.4 percent as gay and 4.5 percent as "mostly heterosexual." For teen girls, 1.9 percent identified themselves as bisexual, 0.3 percent as lesbian, and 9.5 percent as mostly heterosexual. The rest reported they were heterosexual.
No group was immune to bullying. Nearly 44 percent of gay male participants said they had been bullied in the previous year, compared with 26 percent of heterosexuals who reported the same. For girls, 40 percent of lesbians indicated they had been bullied in the past year, while just over 15 percent of heterosexuals reported such. About 35 percent of bisexual and mostly homosexual guys had been bullied and about 25 percent of their female counterparts.
Scientists have known that gay, lesbian and bisexual kids are more likely than their peers to experience any kind of victimization, whether at school or in other parts of their lives, Berlan said. Now bullying can be added to the list.
"The importance of that is we know that it's not just that they're bullied and that's a normative experience for young people," Berlan said. "We know kids who are bullied have health consequences of those bullying experiences. Kids who are bullied are more likely to have physical and mental health problems."
Though the study didn't get at the content of bullying, some research has shown that regardless of the target's sexual orientation, bullies tend to spout disparaging homosexual content, according to Berlan.
To my knowledge, the doctor's son didn't say anything homophobic to my son Jonathan, whom I assume is not gay, although he, like all the kids who call me dad, has been called "queer," "faggot," "bitch" and other pejoratives by other kids at some point. It seems to be something that kids are learning early --- and learning that it's a way of getting under each other's skins.
In any case, there is a new generation of children coming along. Some are my daughter Tracy's kids, who call me Papaw James. The older ones know they have a gay grandpa, and some other gay family members, too. And to the credit of their parents, they won't be among the bullies who use "gay" as an epithet for other kids.
That's some comfort. But how long will it take before such good behavior is exhibited by a majority of kids toward each other?
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