I do wish I could point out to John Rave the difference in how he faced Hodgkin’s and my brother faced Crohn’s.
It’s an object lesson.
I actually have walked by Westbeth a few times over the last 45 years, usually when I head home from Fleet Week via the High Line to the PATH station at Christopher Street, for the walk. Good exercise, great plants, lovely weather.
When I pass Westbeth’s brooding industrial architecture, I still shiver. I clutch the pepper spray in my pocket, just in case….
I also like the scene from "Christmas Story" where Ralphie loses his shit at Scott Farkus (sp?) and his minions (Scott's) just with gape jawed. That is always the power structure around bullies.
That vignette in “A Christmas Story” is echoed by Denis Leary in “Why We Suck.”
Both Ralphie and Denis dealt with their block’s bullies by beating them senseless. After leaving Scut Farkus and the other kid’s noses drenched with blood, the two bullies never bothered them again.
In “A Christmas Story,” notice how Scut Farkus has a nasty little jackal who urges Farkus on to greater sadism. Such a character was in the second “ABC Afterschool Special” I had to watch: “Psst! Marv Hammerman’s After You!”
The bully Hammerman has a jackal named “Peaches” who urges Hammerman to stomp the main character further. Hammerman, having hammered his point, declines.
I’ll let psychologists and social workers explain that.
If I didn’t find some humor in what John Rave did, he would have won.
I do wish I’d known about that pizza…it was an interesting gesture. At the very least, I would have thanked him, asked him why, and suggested he mention that gesture to the entourage that joined him in his violence.
An interesting essay on life, disabilities, and how we face adversity. If you're born with a disability, you see it as something normal in your life because you've never known anything different. If you develop a disability, especially as a young teen, then feeling like you're broken or have let everyone else down is something that's hard to avoid and you end up feeling like you have no life ahead for you to live.
There are advantages to moving several times as a kid. School bullies came and went. I learned how to deal with them through a variety of means since I saw so many of them. It wasn't some lightbulb moment, it was just the normal reaction of always being "the new kid". There were a few bloodied noses, and a lot of thick skin, and a college reading level when I was still in elementary school. There was also me beating up a high school freshman when I was in 6th grade because he was being a bully to kids younger than me.
There was also "A Separate Peace" where the boy dies from a broken arm; "The Outsiders", and so many other Young Adult novels that featured someone dying from one ailment or another. No wonder our generation has so many germaphobes. Lol. I guess that was a better way to prepare us just in case someone decided to drop the bomb. I remember a lot of dystopian novels, too.
But I'm not sure that going all Titus Andronicus on a bully is the correct path in life, no matter what satisfaction it may bring. There are other means by which bullies can be beaten, sometimes just surviving is enough; usually showing them how pathetic they are is much better. But truly forgiving them, as hard as it is, seems to be the best way most of the time. Very often, bullies have people who are bullying them to begin with.
But there is the old adage: never get into an argument with a person who buys ink by the gallon.
I had a dysfunctional home life...narcissistic, paranoid, angry, manipulative mother who delighted in hammering people.
To me, that was "normal." Imagine how astonished I was when I discovered otherwise in other families. I made up my mind that when I had my daughter, I would not "pass forward" my mother's behavior. Every time I was in a potential disciplinary situation, I did the reverse.
The last time I disciplined my daughter, she was in the fourth grade.
She's 27 now. Has a university degree. Earns six figures. Climbs rock walls. Travels around the nation to visit friends, watch the Northern Lights, and the solar eclipse. Runs the sound board at her Unitarian Church. Did well.
Someone told me when I was an adult that the screenplays about teenagers dying of the disease-of-the-week was to prepare us for "what happens if dreams don't come true."
"Nice message," I said caustically. "Why not just tell them to accept being conscripted into a war to support major corporations' profit pictures, killing innocent civilians there, and coming home without an arm, leg, testicles, or even a face?" (IED damage)
I believe that dysfunctional homes are the normal model. More families are like The Simpsons rather than like The Clevers on Leave It To Beaver. Maybe there is the "perfect family" out there somewhere, but I can't bear to think of the problems those children would have in real life situations. And I'm not being cynical. Our dysfunctional childhood homelife (in my case a father who was an alcoholic who was raised in a very abusive family, who had the sexual mores of your average tom cat; a mother who kept the home together even if that meant overlooking a lot of dad's problems and who got "religion" in a strong way just before I moved out of the house; a brother who was always very popular no matter how much we moved around, a bully, and someone who couldn't stand to share the limelight; and an extended family that were varied, colorful, unusual, and had more problems the inhabitants of an Arkansas trailer park.
Basically, take all of the drama and backstabbing of Dallas, Dynasty, and As The World Turns, and fill it with the families from Roseanne, All In The Family, The Simpsons, Family Guy, The Waltons, Breaking Bad, and the inhabitants of an Arkansas trailer park, and you have a good idea of my extended family.
There was no way I was going to watch COPS or Jerry Springer, I never knew which cousin , uncle or aunt, was likely to show up on either or both shows. But some of my cousins grew up and did fairly well for themselves; others had too many demons that haunted their lives until drug addiction and suicide overcame them.
I really do think that we experience quantum mechanics on a macro level, but we call it randomness, chance, Karma, fate, and similar words when logic and general cause and effect that we would expect doesn't account for how things turn out. A perfect childhood doesn't always lead to a perfect adulthood; a bad childhood doesn't always lead to a bad adulthood. Our families are only part of the mix of people and events that we grow up in.
The disease-of-the-week movies generally sucked. I could never find people who resembled me on TV while I was growing up. Now I find nerds everywhere, and it's wonderful that we are finally being represented as role models.
The problems growing up were not the usual ones. But I knew other people who had to deal with much worse family issue while growing up. We were much more like the Simpsons mixed with the Joads, than the Waltons or the Keatons.
I don't know of anyone who had the perfect family while growing up. Each family has their own problems and issues. Some families do better at handling adverse issues while others fly apart under the slightest pressure.
Certainly "Father Knows Best" , "Leave It To Beaver" and "Ozzie and Harriet" presented a model of the nuclear family that wasn't real, and most families tried to compare themselves with that model. My aunt carries a lot of anger issues because family life for her wasn't what was projected on TV as being "normal".
Dick and Jane, and other books, really tried to present a model of childhood where everything was perfect. I tend to think that "Lord of the Flies" and "A Series Of Unfortunate Events" are more accurate representations of childhood experiences than what most school boards put forward on their accepted reading lists.
I think that most parents try to protect their kids too much. Kids need to face adversity and overcome real problems in order to develop those skills before they become adults. But I'm also for kids playing D&D and roleplaying games, including video games, as a way to develop critical thinking skills.
I could never find out what happened to my bully, because he had a very common name. The last time I saw him, he was wearing an ROTC helmet, mirror-like chrome, it was. Maybe he got his ween shot off in Grenada.
He got fragged by his own men. It's in the movie's closing credits, and there's a reference to it in the movie "Twilight Zone," both directed by John Landis.
Those who never saw the American Graffiti sequel also never saw Terri the Toad trying to drag his superior officer with a cake loaded with explosives: “it’s angel food,” he says significantly
Fantastic human story. Bravo to you for calling it out! My misfortune of being an outlier in a Catholic elementary brought on an influx of bullies. Girls and boys. The trauma was paralyzing. At the final H S reunion I attended I asked one of the bullies why. He just stood there in his glowing arrogance and replied, “ because we could”. Bullies are a waste of oxygen. Parents and adults wrangling children and students should be adept at calling out the monsters!
The current sewer of GOP should be punished by not allowing them to spew absurdities.
Of course he did. Smirk seems to be a sort of armor for some. The kicker is reporting bully behavior in my household was not an option. So the trauma remained buried . Even the nuns at the school were blind to it. Gah! I survived and you have as well, I hope. Take care
Very very great story , yes you are right about your bully and the new gop all the way , big tine bullies until they are alone . Great way to express what you went through , with what could happen here . If we all don't vote blue down the ticket . thanks kiwi my friend
Thank you, that was a very powerful story and I'm sincerely sorry you were subjected to the bullies torment.
You rose above hatred to flourish, THAT is how you beat a bully.
Thank you….
I do wish I could point out to John Rave the difference in how he faced Hodgkin’s and my brother faced Crohn’s.
It’s an object lesson.
I actually have walked by Westbeth a few times over the last 45 years, usually when I head home from Fleet Week via the High Line to the PATH station at Christopher Street, for the walk. Good exercise, great plants, lovely weather.
When I pass Westbeth’s brooding industrial architecture, I still shiver. I clutch the pepper spray in my pocket, just in case….
Sick to my stomach for that young boy you were. For the splinters he left in you.
I still have a few.
My therapist insists that John Rave is dead from Hodgkin's, but I doubt it...I'm sure he's alive and sickly and living in Westbeth.
Demons never die. Exorcised, maybe.
I exercise Demons every day…I make them do 25 push-ups, 30 sit-ups, eight 10-count body-builders….
That should teach ‘em!
Having been the only Type 1 Diabetic as a child I understand that torment.
Clutch that pepper spray tight, whatever it takes to walk through the hellscape. 💖
I might bring my 12-inch Gurkha khukri knife, too….
If only to see him fill his pants with organic matter….
That brought an evil grin to my face because I truly understand that thinking.
I love using mace on bullies. Great read.
It certainly changes their attitude…and the contents of their underwear….
You decided to live, that's how you truly beat the bullies.
I tried to kill myself because of the teachers that bullied me.
I wrote about that in my three-part essay on mathematics.
I’d rather not rehearse that.
I remembered, that's why I mentioned it.
It was Radiohead in that South Park episode.
I also like the scene from "Christmas Story" where Ralphie loses his shit at Scott Farkus (sp?) and his minions (Scott's) just with gape jawed. That is always the power structure around bullies.
Powerful story!
That vignette in “A Christmas Story” is echoed by Denis Leary in “Why We Suck.”
Both Ralphie and Denis dealt with their block’s bullies by beating them senseless. After leaving Scut Farkus and the other kid’s noses drenched with blood, the two bullies never bothered them again.
In “A Christmas Story,” notice how Scut Farkus has a nasty little jackal who urges Farkus on to greater sadism. Such a character was in the second “ABC Afterschool Special” I had to watch: “Psst! Marv Hammerman’s After You!”
The bully Hammerman has a jackal named “Peaches” who urges Hammerman to stomp the main character further. Hammerman, having hammered his point, declines.
I’ll let psychologists and social workers explain that.
LOOOOVE that episode!
Very strong story. Blazing with feeling, anger and some humour. One against the bullies of the world. Apposite in an election year.
If I didn’t find some humor in what John Rave did, he would have won.
I do wish I’d known about that pizza…it was an interesting gesture. At the very least, I would have thanked him, asked him why, and suggested he mention that gesture to the entourage that joined him in his violence.
Dude I am glad you didn't eat that pizza. He could have had a friend working at the pizza place.
That thought did not occur to me…
I remember reading about a high school kid who, at graduation, gave his teachers a cake that was covered with a laxative in ground-dust form.
No, they did not just have to go to the john repeatedly.
They suffered severe stomach issues that required hospitalization.
I think that if he had sent a pizza loaded with laxatives, he might have confronted me a day or two later to ridicule me about it, though.
An interesting essay on life, disabilities, and how we face adversity. If you're born with a disability, you see it as something normal in your life because you've never known anything different. If you develop a disability, especially as a young teen, then feeling like you're broken or have let everyone else down is something that's hard to avoid and you end up feeling like you have no life ahead for you to live.
There are advantages to moving several times as a kid. School bullies came and went. I learned how to deal with them through a variety of means since I saw so many of them. It wasn't some lightbulb moment, it was just the normal reaction of always being "the new kid". There were a few bloodied noses, and a lot of thick skin, and a college reading level when I was still in elementary school. There was also me beating up a high school freshman when I was in 6th grade because he was being a bully to kids younger than me.
There was also "A Separate Peace" where the boy dies from a broken arm; "The Outsiders", and so many other Young Adult novels that featured someone dying from one ailment or another. No wonder our generation has so many germaphobes. Lol. I guess that was a better way to prepare us just in case someone decided to drop the bomb. I remember a lot of dystopian novels, too.
But I'm not sure that going all Titus Andronicus on a bully is the correct path in life, no matter what satisfaction it may bring. There are other means by which bullies can be beaten, sometimes just surviving is enough; usually showing them how pathetic they are is much better. But truly forgiving them, as hard as it is, seems to be the best way most of the time. Very often, bullies have people who are bullying them to begin with.
But there is the old adage: never get into an argument with a person who buys ink by the gallon.
I had a dysfunctional home life...narcissistic, paranoid, angry, manipulative mother who delighted in hammering people.
To me, that was "normal." Imagine how astonished I was when I discovered otherwise in other families. I made up my mind that when I had my daughter, I would not "pass forward" my mother's behavior. Every time I was in a potential disciplinary situation, I did the reverse.
The last time I disciplined my daughter, she was in the fourth grade.
She's 27 now. Has a university degree. Earns six figures. Climbs rock walls. Travels around the nation to visit friends, watch the Northern Lights, and the solar eclipse. Runs the sound board at her Unitarian Church. Did well.
Someone told me when I was an adult that the screenplays about teenagers dying of the disease-of-the-week was to prepare us for "what happens if dreams don't come true."
"Nice message," I said caustically. "Why not just tell them to accept being conscripted into a war to support major corporations' profit pictures, killing innocent civilians there, and coming home without an arm, leg, testicles, or even a face?" (IED damage)
I believe that dysfunctional homes are the normal model. More families are like The Simpsons rather than like The Clevers on Leave It To Beaver. Maybe there is the "perfect family" out there somewhere, but I can't bear to think of the problems those children would have in real life situations. And I'm not being cynical. Our dysfunctional childhood homelife (in my case a father who was an alcoholic who was raised in a very abusive family, who had the sexual mores of your average tom cat; a mother who kept the home together even if that meant overlooking a lot of dad's problems and who got "religion" in a strong way just before I moved out of the house; a brother who was always very popular no matter how much we moved around, a bully, and someone who couldn't stand to share the limelight; and an extended family that were varied, colorful, unusual, and had more problems the inhabitants of an Arkansas trailer park.
Basically, take all of the drama and backstabbing of Dallas, Dynasty, and As The World Turns, and fill it with the families from Roseanne, All In The Family, The Simpsons, Family Guy, The Waltons, Breaking Bad, and the inhabitants of an Arkansas trailer park, and you have a good idea of my extended family.
There was no way I was going to watch COPS or Jerry Springer, I never knew which cousin , uncle or aunt, was likely to show up on either or both shows. But some of my cousins grew up and did fairly well for themselves; others had too many demons that haunted their lives until drug addiction and suicide overcame them.
I really do think that we experience quantum mechanics on a macro level, but we call it randomness, chance, Karma, fate, and similar words when logic and general cause and effect that we would expect doesn't account for how things turn out. A perfect childhood doesn't always lead to a perfect adulthood; a bad childhood doesn't always lead to a bad adulthood. Our families are only part of the mix of people and events that we grow up in.
The disease-of-the-week movies generally sucked. I could never find people who resembled me on TV while I was growing up. Now I find nerds everywhere, and it's wonderful that we are finally being represented as role models.
You had a very hard time.
You have my empathy and sympathy.
The problems growing up were not the usual ones. But I knew other people who had to deal with much worse family issue while growing up. We were much more like the Simpsons mixed with the Joads, than the Waltons or the Keatons.
I don't know of anyone who had the perfect family while growing up. Each family has their own problems and issues. Some families do better at handling adverse issues while others fly apart under the slightest pressure.
We can thank "Dick and Jane" and "Father Knows Best" for the idea that family life and childhoods are wonderful.
Certainly "Father Knows Best" , "Leave It To Beaver" and "Ozzie and Harriet" presented a model of the nuclear family that wasn't real, and most families tried to compare themselves with that model. My aunt carries a lot of anger issues because family life for her wasn't what was projected on TV as being "normal".
Dick and Jane, and other books, really tried to present a model of childhood where everything was perfect. I tend to think that "Lord of the Flies" and "A Series Of Unfortunate Events" are more accurate representations of childhood experiences than what most school boards put forward on their accepted reading lists.
I think that most parents try to protect their kids too much. Kids need to face adversity and overcome real problems in order to develop those skills before they become adults. But I'm also for kids playing D&D and roleplaying games, including video games, as a way to develop critical thinking skills.
oh, my, some story here keep it up
That was a great read, thank you.
You’re very welcome!
I could never find out what happened to my bully, because he had a very common name. The last time I saw him, he was wearing an ROTC helmet, mirror-like chrome, it was. Maybe he got his ween shot off in Grenada.
Sounds like Lt. Niedermeyer from "Animal House."
He got fragged by his own men. It's in the movie's closing credits, and there's a reference to it in the movie "Twilight Zone," both directed by John Landis.
Those who never saw the American Graffiti sequel also never saw Terri the Toad trying to drag his superior officer with a cake loaded with explosives: “it’s angel food,” he says significantly
Drag, autocorrect?! “Frag”!
Autocorrect is a major....drag...
A truly moving story. Much love to you
Thank you.
Fantastic human story. Bravo to you for calling it out! My misfortune of being an outlier in a Catholic elementary brought on an influx of bullies. Girls and boys. The trauma was paralyzing. At the final H S reunion I attended I asked one of the bullies why. He just stood there in his glowing arrogance and replied, “ because we could”. Bullies are a waste of oxygen. Parents and adults wrangling children and students should be adept at calling out the monsters!
The current sewer of GOP should be punished by not allowing them to spew absurdities.
That bully pretty much speaks for all of them.
“Because they can.”
Shaking my head.
Did he ever face justice or retribution?
I bet he stood there and smirked….
Of course he did. Smirk seems to be a sort of armor for some. The kicker is reporting bully behavior in my household was not an option. So the trauma remained buried . Even the nuns at the school were blind to it. Gah! I survived and you have as well, I hope. Take care
You should have treated that smirking pile of human filth to a dose of pepper spray…and then said, “Oh, I’m sorry, did I hurt you?”
Very very great story , yes you are right about your bully and the new gop all the way , big tine bullies until they are alone . Great way to express what you went through , with what could happen here . If we all don't vote blue down the ticket . thanks kiwi my friend
An enjoyable read. Thank you.
You’re very welcome.
At some levels, I would like to meet up with John Rave, unpack the memories, and get some closure.
Hodgkin’s at age 11 is a harsh deal. I’m told his mother couldn’t handle it. Systems to support kids in that condition in 1973 barely existed.
He deserved support and assistance in making positive choices and the best of a bad situation.
Immaturity and despair made him a bully. Because he made that choice, he doesn’t deserve much pity.
Shakespeare beat "South Park" on that episode plot by several centuries with "Titus Andronicus".
Doesn’t surprise me. Shakespeare invented everything.
One-third of our cliches are in “Hamlet.”
One-third are in The Bible.
The other third are in “The Wizard of Oz.”
I often wonder if bullies and just plain mean people realize the effect that they have on others or if they just don’t care.
Both.
I’m a Hegelian.
I had to look that up, didn't realize it was a term for the dialectical method of argument. See how cool it is to learn something new every day!
What I like about Hegel is how he attributed multiple causes to events, not a single cause.