sadI do not have a library card because I grew up poor—very, very, After-School Special poor, cockroaches in my bedroom and scavenging from trashcans poor—and I was badly bullied by the kids in my school, leading, eventually, to a group of girls stealing and destroying my library books. I couldn't pay the fines. I couldn't even tell anyone what had happened, because when the scruffy little poor girl complained about the sweet, well-groomed rich kids who had each others' backs, well...I had been down that road. The only people who would believe me were my mother and my teachers, and all I could do by telling them was upset them. I couldn't change anything.
I'm not that girl anymore. But the idea of getting a library card terrifies me, because some small, irrational part of me is convinced, incurably, that if I were to get a library card, those girls from school would show up, and slap my books out of my hands, and leave me standing alone on the sidewalk, sobbing over the loss of one of the things I loved most in the world: the ability to walk into a library with my head up, feeling like the books were free for anybody who wanted to read them.
The library books weren't the worst thing that happened to me during my school career. I was weird, I was geeky, I had frizzy hair and glasses and didn't really "get" a lot of the unspoken rules of the playground. I blew grade curves and didn't let people cheat off me on tests. I was basically invented to be the school punching-bag. But the library books were one of the things I never got over, because the library books taught me, once and for all, that sometimes the bullies win. Sometimes, you can't fight back, you can't stand up for yourself like the adults tell you to, and the bullies. Just. Win.
Phoebe Prince lost, too. But she's never going to be a grown-up, secure from bullies, writing a post like this one. Because she lost to the bullies so hard and so overwhelmingly that she killed herself.
Megan Kelly Hall is organizing YA authors against bullying, in memory of Phoebe Prince. Please. Go and read what she has to say. Consider what the current culture of bullying is doing to us, to our children, to our nieces and nephews, to the children of our friends. Even bullying that you survive can scar you forever, and Phoebe isn't the first to take her own life over this sort of thing. It's gotten so much worse than it was when I was in school, and I cried myself to sleep for years over the bullying.
This needs to stop. We need to stop it.
Please.
April 21 2010, 03:00:22 UTC 7 years ago
I got teased mercilessly all through elementary school because I was the awkward kid who didn't care about having cool clothes and because I was smart (and a girl, but that's another rant). I can think of at least one teacher who could have stopped the bullying and didn't, instead blaming me for disrupting the class.
Fortunately, I was removed from that class shortly after by skipping grade 7 and finishing elementary school early. Reading through the comments here, I feel very very lucky that the teasing never advanced to physical violence, and I also feel horrible that there are so many people who've been affected so severely. Reading the link you posted nearly made me cry.
After high school I ended up studying engineering, which oddly enough was probably the best thing possible for me - suddenly there was no shame in being the geeky kid who liked math or science. Someday, I know I'm going to run into the girl who made my life a living hell, and I don't want to gloat, but I want to run into her JUST ONCE, and tell her how freakin' awesome my life got as soon as I moved far far away from her. And then I'm going to smile quietly and walk away, and go back to ignoring her existence completely.
Thank you for this, and I sincerely hope that you get your library card someday. :)
April 23 2010, 14:43:27 UTC 7 years ago
I am so glad your life rocks so hard. Seriously. Also, you're right about the vector calculus.