People come in all shapes and sizes, with all kinds of different abilities and disabilities—some are slim, some are fat; others are handsome, ugly, inferior, strong, weak, dorky, or nerdy—but God made us all, so that makes every one of us special, despite our shortcomings. All of us have something, or lack something, that potentially can make us a target for abuse.
But that doesn’t mean there’s something “wrong” with you. Everybody has something they wish they could change about themselves. If you have discovered some “defect” in yourself, welcome to the human race. Regardless of your failures, foibles, or defeats, you’re just as human (and just as precious) as anybody else. You’re a member.
Think you’re ugly? You’re a member.
Do you have cystic hygroma, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, or polio? You’re a member.
Do you have freckles? Are you too tall, too skinny, too much . . . anything? You’re a member.
Do you feel left out simply because you’re smart? You’re a member.
Do you feel left out because you’re mentally or physically challenged? You’re a member.
Have you ever been raped? Molested? You’re still a member.
All of us, with all our wrinkles, shortcomings, bumblings, and imperfections, are God’s creation. We’re all precious in His sight and should be precious to one another—and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, not even you.
And how about this startling revelation: It wasn’t (isn’t) your fault.
One of the most common mistakes made by victims of abuse is to think that for some reason the abuse was justified, that they actually deserved it. Nothing could be farther from the truth!
This came as a real lightning bolt for me while I was working on this book. As I reluctantly trudged back through my dark, difficult memories and encountered the faces and voices of my abusers once again, I finally saw them for what they were: bullies, not to be feared, but to be pitied. Suddenly it dawned on me: It wasn’t my fault! What those kids did to me had nothing to do with me. There was never anything so terribly wrong with me that other people had no choice but to be irresistibly, uncontrollably compelled to abuse me. Yes, I was a sinner who needed to be saved by God’s grace, but I was not some freak of nature who merited the disdain with which I was treated. It wasn’t my problem; it was theirs!
I guess it’s just one of those quirky, human tendencies: We tend to believe what others say about us and to view ourselves through their eyes. The moment we get around other people, we start wondering, Am I okay? Are they going to like me? Will they accept me? If we manage to make a good impression and everybody seems to like us, we usually go home feeling pretty good about ourselves.
On the other hand, if we stumble or make a blunder, if somebody in the room brands us as the fool or the whole gang of them ignores us entirely, it’s quite easy to go home believing we are what they have made us out to be.
When I was in junior high, I was very small for my age. That shouldn’t have been a problem, but of course there were those in my class who made it a problem, as if there were something wrong with me for being small. Well, I believed it. After all, it was my smallness. I was the one who brought it to school with me. If I was being heckled, bullied, and thrown around, it was because I deserved it. If I’d just had the common sense to be bigger before coming to school, the other kids would have had no choice but to accept me. No one has the right to be small. I should have known that.
Weird, isn’t it? For some reason we focus on ourselves as the cause of the abuse, as if our tormentors have no choice (or responsibility) in the matter, and we buy into their program of lies and humiliation. Before long, we begin thinking, I’m no good. I’m dumb. I’m a fool. I’m a shrimp. I’m a klutz. That’s what the bullies say, so it has to be true!
Tragically, we can go through the rest of our lives believing those lies. Even as adults, we shy from new relationships, we’re afraid of taking risks or being wrong, we get hurt easily, we fumble in conversations, we huddle in a corner at gatherings, and we keep kicking ourselves over every little mistake, because we’ve been conditioned to believe that we, of all people, don’t have the right to be imperfect.
Face it. You’re not perfect, and that’s okay! It’s okay! Nobody’s perfect, and if anybody ever made an issue of it, they were the ones in the wrong, not you.
To put it simply, what happened to you shouldn’t have happened. What was said about you shouldn’t have been said, and what was done to you shouldn’t have been done. Nobody deserves to be abused.
So please don’t blame yourself.
Now, here’s where a change of attitude comes into play, because the third important observation is, you don’t have to put up with it. You really don’t.
And as for whoever is in charge of the school environment, the workplace, the home, or the street, they shouldn’t expect you to.
Looking back, one of the greatest mysteries of my life is why I did put up with it for so long. I can only explain it this way: I thought I had to. Most of the abuse I endured happened at school. There was no way I could avoid it. After all, it was school. While transferring to another school district, attending private school, or homeschooling may be viable options for some families today, these were not options for my family. I was stuck in that one school. My parents made me go. The teachers made me sit at my desk. I was a good kid trying to be obedient. No one ever told me, “Frank, you’re in school to learn, not to be picked on and tormented. Teasing and abuse are not part of the package, and we won’t allow it. We care about you, so if anyone causes you trouble, let us know.”
Here comes that word again: attitude. In my case, parents and teachers simply weren’t dealing with abuse—if they were, it sure wasn’t on my planet. As far as I, the timid, obedient, little kid, could see or understand, my parents said I had to be there, the teachers implied through inaction that it was okay for me to be tormented, and the unwritten, anti-snitching law among the kids warned me that I dare not tell anybody. I resigned myself to enduring the abusive behavior of the bullies in my life for most of my junior-high and high-school education.
Attitude, attitude, ATTITUDE! We must change our attitudes regarding this sort of behavior. Those in authority need to care, and you should expect them to care. It matters to you, and it should matter to them. Forget about that foolish, childhood code of silence: Speak up. Let someone know what’s going on, and ask them—yes, expect them—to do something about it. If you’re a kid under someone’s legal authority, you still have rights as a human being. You deserve to be regarded as God’s unique, special creation— because you are!
The same holds true for bullying on the job. If you are being physically, verbally, or emotionally abused at work, speak to your supervisor, and if I may suggest it, make it a matter of productivity and money. If fellow workers are bullying you, help the supervisor to understand that it’s keeping you from doing your job effectively, and, therefore, it’s affecting the smooth operation of the department. Furthermore, it’s going to affect the bottom line. The supervisor isn’t going to make his numbers because the crew isn’t working well as a team, and it’s going to be his rear end in the ringer. Any boss, from supervisor to CEO, wants the business to run smoothly and therefore shouldn’t stand for such disruptions.
Speak up. You really don’t have to tolerate the abuse any longer.
So by now you should be ready to do something!
Yes, it’s going to take the right attitude on the part of the boss, the teacher, the parent, the principal, or whoever is responsible for the school or work environment. They have to care. They have to be approachable. But you may have to take the first step, at least be ready to respond when you see an opportunity to bring the abuse to the attention of the proper authorities.
For example . . .
It occurred to me the other day that most gym teachers are athletes or former athletes. They were athletes in high school and in college, they naturally hang around other athletes, and now they’re at
the center of the athletic program at the school. Consequently, some of these men and women haven’t a clue what it’s like to be a nonathlete, and their physical education program reflects that: The winners get the points, and the losers fall through the cracks; the athletes enjoy the game, and the nonathletes just want to get out of there.
Despite my small stature as a boy, I always enjoyed physical activity and physical challenges. To this day, I exercise, I work out, I enjoy physical labor, and I relish a brisk walk on the logging trails that run through the mountains around our home. I run around and enjoy life outdoors as much as anybody. I’m just not an athlete. I happen to think that tending a garden for all to enjoy, fixing a machine that performs useful labor, and writing books that minister to millions carry more importance for me than putting on little shorts and passing a bouncing, spherical object through a metal hoop more often than the other guy.
For a nonathletic kid, who is already at the bottom of the food chain at most schools, a big, muscular, gruff-voiced, suck-it-up gym teacher with a tight T-shirt and a whistle around his thick neck is the last person on earth he’s going to approach about a bullying problem. At the same time, does the gym teacher really know how it feels to be in a world where he has never, and will never, really fit? How are the two going to relate?
I guess that’s why I never expected much compassion or mercy from my gym teachers. Most of my P.E. teachers didn’t seem to care how I felt; they just yelled at me and blew their whistles. But all that changed when one man, a gym teacher, took the time—a brief moment, actually—to care.
Bullying is a remarkable phenomenon, the way it follows you. In junior high school, I attracted specific people who became my self-appointed tormentors, and that went on for the full three years. When I started high school, I was with a whole new crowd of classmates, and yet the bullying picked up right where it left off. It didn’t miss a beat. You’d think the junior-high bullies had held a tie-in meeting with the high-school bullies: “Okay, be looking for Peretti. This is what we’ve done to him so far . . .”
Remember the young boy in chapter 1? That kind of stuff happened to me all through junior high and all through my sophomore year in high school until suddenly, even astonishingly, everything changed. I don’t remember the exact times and dates, but I do remember the chain of events. It started one day when I was running an errand for my mom.
The Graham Street Grocery was a little neighborhood grocery store less than a block from our house. We had an account there, and Mom often sent me to pick up small items: a loaf of bread, milk, ice cream, whatever. A young man from my high school got an after-school job there, and though I’d never done him wrong and he hardly knew me, he became my enemy. I guess, to him, it was the cool thing to do.
On this particular day, I was minding my own business, just going up and down those short little aisles and picking up items on my grocery list, when my nemesis met me toward the back of the store, out of his boss’s earshot.
“Whatcha doin’, Peretti?”
“Oh, just buying some stuff.”
“What do you need?”
I looked at my list. “I need to get some deodorant.”
“Which kind?”
You know deodorants. There are so many different brands, they can fill a whole shelf. “Well, we usually use this one. . . .”
He grabbed a can off the shelf. “This one?”
I thought he was going to hand it to me. “Yeah.”
Suddenly, without provocation, he popped the cap off and sprayed the deodorant directly in my face! I forget what he said as he did it, but it wasn’t kind.
That stuff stings! My eyes were watering, and tears streamed down my face. I was shocked and incredulous. I just couldn’t believe a guy waiting on me in a grocery store would do that to me! I quickly made my way to the checkout counter, rubbing my eyes and wiping my nose. I could hardly see as I signed our tab and made a hasty exit from the store.
You may well ask why I didn’t report the incident to Vern, the man who owned the store. Looking back, I can only wonder the same. It must have had something to do with the devious power of that old maxim that has protected bullies for generations: You don’t snitch.
I stumbled out of the store and around the corner, my grocery bag in my arm, and then . . . it’s hard to describe . . . I was like a hunted animal who has been shot but still runs several yards before collapsing from loss of blood. I made it around the corner, but that’s as far as I could go before something just broke inside me. I dropped to the curb, weeping, devastated, despondent. I’d come to the end.
“Oh, dear Lord,” I prayed, still wiping the sting out of my eyes. “Please . . . I just can’t take it anymore.” It felt just a little strange to be praying such a thing because, in my mind, I still linked God with all the other authorities in my life. They were all making me go through this, and so was He. As I prayed, I was actually pleading for mercy. “Please, God; please don’t do this to me anymore. Don’t make me go back there. Have mercy, dear Lord. I haven’t fought back; I haven’t snitched; I’ve turned the other cheek. Haven’t I suffered enough?”
I’m reminded of God’s response to Moses: “Surely I have heard the cry of My people in Egypt.” They’d been crying to Him for the better part of four hundred years! But, at last, it was God’s time to answer.
And, after so, so, long, God answered me.
A few days later, I faithfully and obediently stepped through the big, ominous door for another hour of Boy’s Hell. My despair must have been showing. One of the teachers paused—he actually took just a moment—and spoke quietly to me. “How you doing? You feeling okay?”
I looked back at him in disbelief. Somebody in authority was actually asking about me, and he seemed genuinely concerned! He wasn’t even my teacher. He had other classes, other coaching duties, but he was there, and he had noticed that I was looking ill. This was so unexpected, so unusual, I didn’t know what to say, or whether I should say anything at all. I was afraid of those gruff P.E. teachers. Not one of them had ever, ever before asked me how I felt.
I muttered some look-down-at-the-floor answer, just as an insecure boy my age might do, and he went on about his business.
But the gentle tone of his voice did something to me: It gave me just the tiniest, years-in-coming ray of hope, something I’d never felt before. Somebody really wanted to know how I was doing? Somebody might really listen? I grabbed onto that hope for all I was worth, and then, suddenly, an idea came to me. I didn’t think I could express myself orally to a teacher who still intimidated me, but by now, I knew I could write. I decided to write my gym teacher a letter. I would tell him everything. Maybe things could change.
The first chance I got—study hall, I think it was—I started drafting a letter. I can vividly remember sitting in the quiet of the library on the third floor of Cleveland High School in Seattle, addressing a letter to Mr. Sampson, my P.E. teacher. First of all, I let him know that it was the kind inquiry of his colleague that prompted my letter, and then I began. I wrote that whole period. I wrote during lunch. I wrote during any opportunity I could find the rest of the day. I chronicled everything I could remember: all the insults, the abuse, the assaults, the humiliations, everything over the past several years. The letter filled several pages, handwritten in blue ink, single-spaced, both sides of the paper. That afternoon, before leaving for home, I went into the school office and slipped it into Mr. Sampson’s mailbox.
Gym class was every other day, so he had a day to read my letter before I had to face him again. By the time I came through that door the next time, Mr. Sampson was looking for me. “Peretti. Hold up a second,” he called from inside his locker-room office.
Well, Mr. Sampson had obviously read my letter. Now what? He didn’t seem very angry. Who else had seen that letter? What if he wanted to read the letter in front of the other guys in the locker room? Oh, Lord, this is it. Please don’t let me down.
I stood there against the wall,
nervous, schoolbooks in my hand, a stream of boys passing before me on their way to the locker room. From my vantage point, I could see through the office door. Mr. Sampson was talking on the phone, and I just barely made out the words, “You want to see him now?”
See who? Me? Who wanted to see me?
He hung up the phone, filled out a hall pass, and sent me to the school office to see the counselor, Mr. Eisenbrey. I’d always been afraid of Mr. Sampson, and I’d always been afraid of Mr. Eisenbrey, but that day changed everything. Those guys had compassion on me; they really did care.
Mr. Eisenbrey had reviewed my letter and was actually warm and cheerful as he helped me rework my class schedule, excusing me from P.E. for the remainder of the school year. “We’ll just call it a medical excuse,” he said, scribbling some notes on a piece of paper. He signed me off and sent me back to Mr. Sampson so he could sign the forms too.
Mr. Sampson didn’t say anything as he filled out the form on his ever-present clipboard. He just smiled at me.
When he handed me my class transfer, my parole, I told him, “If you were a girl, I’d kiss you!”
“You’re welcome,” was all he said.
I went out that door and never saw the inside of that locker room again.
I can’t overstate the pivotal nature of that day in my life. From that moment onward, everything was so different. I could enjoy school. I could get excited about being a Cleveland Eagle. I bought a red-and-white pennant and put it on my bedroom wall. I donned my red-and-white Cleveland beanie, went to the football games, and felt great about my school. I got involved in school drama productions—where I could actually use some of the gifts God had given me—and I burst out of my shell, making lots of new friends, and just going nuts being creative. For the first time in my life, I began to enjoy being me!
So, I said all that to say this: I hope someone in your school, or workplace, or wherever—maybe someone you don’t even suspect would be kind—will be kind to you. I hope they will have the caring, compassionate attitude that is necessary to bring about a change. I hope you will speak to that person, or do as I did and write a letter. Talk about it. I understand that the custom, the expectation, the legacy of our culture up to this point has been to keep it to yourself. Listen, if you think you need some kind of permission to bring up the subject and deal with it, I give you that permission. You needn’t hide behind the facade of having it all together any longer. Get help! Talk to someone who cares—and don’t go another day carrying the burden alone.
No More Bullies Page 8
