Dear Bully: Seventy Authors Tell Their Stories by Megan Kelley Hall & Carrie Jones

Author:Megan Kelley Hall & Carrie Jones [Hall, Megan Kelley & Jones, Carrie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Young Adult Nonfiction, Social Topics, Bullying, Biography & Autobiography, Literary, Assimilation, Emotions & Feelings
ISBN: 9780062060983
Google: vjDAos6ykP4C
Amazon: 0062060988
Publisher: HarperTeen
Published: 2011-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

Insight

The Other Side

by Nancy Holder

Recently, I received a letter brimming with pain and remorse. It was from a bully. “I’m the queen bee you’ve written about,” she wrote. “I’m the one people save a seat for and hope I’ll sit down next to them in return. I’m the one with the cool clothes and I throw the good parties. People want to hang out with me. They do all kinds of things just to be seen with me. But I’m mean, and my friends are mean, and I don’t know how to stop.”

I told her that I know how that feels.

When I was in middle school, I was the kind of girl who was “good” popular—president of the Associated Student Body, editor of the paper, friend to all . . . or so they thought. But I gleefully filled out the pages of a slam book with dozens of names in it, and not all my comments were nice. Some were far from nice. Some were very, very mean. With some years between then and now, I’m stunned that I could have said such things. But at the time, we scribbled in that book in classes, passing it around when the teachers weren’t looking. We worked on it during lunch. Gross, zitty, BO. Some of my disses were classics of snark, or so I imagined: B-O-B = L-S-R. As if every mean thing I wrote were some soaring haiku of wit. SUL SUX.

At the end of the week that the slam book made its rounds, I got called to the principal’s office. I sat across from his gray metal desk in a sweat while he asked me if, in my position as the school president and the newspaper editor, I could put a stop to cruel, mean-spirited things like this. Maybe I could write an editorial. Or I could give a speech at the next pep rally. He was genuinely distressed and disappointed that “some people” could turn against their fellow students like wild animals and display such a lack of respect and regard for common decency. As he paged through the spiral-bound notebook, shaking his head, he talked about how some of these insults and digs might stick with the victims for the rest of their lives.

Since we had each created a symbol to represent our names, he didn’t know I had taken part. Was I ashamed that I wrote in the slam book? Yes, but that shame came much later. When I sat there in his office, I didn’t feel so much remorse as acute terror that I would be busted. I was more worried about getting in trouble than I was about inflicting lasting damage on anyone’s psyche.

The Dalai Lama said, “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” And Plato said, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” But I know that when you’re scoring points for epic put-downs and clever repartee, it’s hard to remember to be kind. When you’re in

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