After doing a little scanning of my past blog articles it has come to my attention that I had often written about being bullied in school but never really elaborated on it. I'm not ashamed to say that my entire primary school experience was plagued by one fight to another whether it be physical or emotional and 75% of the time I had my ass handed to me.
But really, it took me years to realise that the torment I had endured was actually categorised as "bullying". At the time I just endured it because in my child like mind, it was something happening so frequently around me I thought it was something natural, part of life. So I put on my big girl panties and tuckered on through.
If I was to record the first time I was 'bullied' I would have to say around the time I entered second year in Febeau Government. I have written about those girls before, just not in detail. I can't give names because it was such a long time ago but what I can say is that they terrified me to the point that the thought of leaving my classroom always lead to panic attacks or my nervous tick of chewing on my fingernails until there was nothing.
The pushing and the shoving was how it started. There was a total of four of them, all varying in height but the leader of the group was massive. Massive to me at the time was anything near to or over one foot. I was short. To paint a picture as how I portrayed them in my mind, here it is.
Everyday was something new with those girls. To this day I can't say what prompted them to attack me of all people all the time. I was quiet, made no waves and had no interest in whatever stupid playground games the students always started and ended in a fight but yet they were consistent in torturing me. My brothers were in higher standards than me so one would think I had the opportunity to sick my big bad brothers after them. No dice. At home I may have had them in grip since my father always fell for my crocodile tears but at school I was on my own.
Friends were hard to make since my interests varied from theirs (barbies, cartoons, Barbie's lover ken, latest gyrating dance, Barbie's dream home) and I always stayed inside the classroom, teachers always looked the other way because nobody wanted to mess with the girl (the leader) whose father sold drugs for a living and the principal was an annoying fuck who thought hitting you solved world hunger. Yeah back in those days corporal punishment was legal.
The straw that broke the camel's back for me was coming to the end of term of my second year period. During my highly Co-op mission in avoiding the girls and running to the cafeteria for a snack, I left my belongings in class, i.e my school bag. A child's stationary was and is always going to be a sacred thing, but it also doubled as the first thing bullies always target when the object of their obsession is out of range. When I got back to class the first thing I noticed was that everybody was lingering outside, like they were waiting for something to happen but in typical me fashion I ignored them and went straight to my seat.
Digging through my bag a scent hit me. I had never smelled it before mainly because my mother had a little OCD when it came to the house so my sense of different smells were limited to bleach or different flavours of Pine-Sol. In school, day old urine and sweaty children was the identifiable smell of the building. So when that acrid stench hit my nose I got a little worried that I might have dropped my bag in poop on the way to school and forgot. Even back then my short term memory was legendary. So I emptied every book out of it and low and behold there it was. The source of the smell. The biggest rat I had ever laid eyes on, squashed and tucked neatly into my English textbook. Then came the snickering, outside, looking through the windows were students laughing to their evil hearts content. Paying no mind to the horrified mask that was my facial expression.
Don't be dismayed though, it wasn't the fact that those girls were evil and disgusting that had me horrified, it was the fact that my bag was relatively new so the thought of my mother actually slapping me into next week had flashed through my mind. She didn't know about the bullying so a good excuse was needed otherwise death was imminent. That bag was the first new school thing I had ever gotten since everything was always hand me downs from my brothers. No sparkly girly book bag for me. Take the sweaty socks smelling, safety pinned together puke green bag your brother doesn't want anymore.
That was what set me off. I literally ran into the leader in the court yard playing hop scotch and we got into a scuffle, when she realised 'this midget could fight' she opted for throwing stones at me. So when she threw the first one, like a white girl dumping food all over a guy in the school's cafeteria in the movies which leads to food fight, I became target practice for the rest of the school all lunchtime. I'm pretty sure some of them thought it was a game.
Ironically enough, I was the one who got yelled at after the bell. I think this pretty much sums up how my face was after the lecture from my teacher.
It got quiet after that, it was like everything before that didn't even happen. Like I became invisible. Some part of me thought that my father got wind of it and did something but the other part just ran with that I must have put the fear of God in them with my Ninja like reflexes and ability to fit in tight corners. I was left to my own devices.
A month later my mother left my father and carried all four of us to her mother's house in the country. We had to assimilate ourselves to life of a country man. Sleeping on the floor, mosquitoes, sugarless tea, waking to the crack ass of dawn to carry water, bathing in a galvanised contraption, shitting in a galvanised contraption (latrine) and basically being used as tools of our "family's" entertainment. This was where school yard bullying upgraded to in home abuse. I had never met my family members when I wasn't in diapers and pooping on myself so on that faithful day when my mother gave my father the middle finger and moved us to a match box on sticks housing five grown adults, two kids and the devil incarnate (grandmother), there was no love there on both sides. You can tell just from the way they looked at us that we were just interlopers.
My mother didn't make it any better with the way she went gallivanting all over the place, braying to people that her life was stifling blah blah blah, my father was a dictator blah blah blah. I didn't mind that she and my father fell out of love, but to me, if anyone had asked I would have told them...
These things happen. At such a young age fussing over it was a waist of time, not like they were married or anything. What pissed me off really was the fact that she could friggin exhale by herself, she had to drag all four of us into it just because. I asked her about it once and she replied, "Well, I wasn't going to leave you all. I am your mother so you all had to come with me."
I don't think to this day she realised that what she did was totally selfish and unreasonable. She took four young children from a home that could house fifty, their own space, a father whose only fault was that he had problems expressing himself to his kids and carried them to a box in the woods filled with vile creatures who thought they were fucking incredible.
My brothers got the worst of it. The 'city' culture was totally different to that of the 'country life'. Respecting elders, saying good morning; evening; night to everybody, doing manual labour for strangers, all that other bullshit was considered mandatory. We didn't have a problem with that. We did our part seeing as how we were guests in their shack. But no, evil knows no bounds so they had to push the envelope. Our uncles Kefim and Keron weren't so bad, they weren't good either. Keron was the last of eight and Kefim second to last. They would joke with us and such so they were considered safe. Until one day solidified my hatred for these people called 'family'. The country is a place littered with blood relatives all over the place so I considered everybody my cousin. No third eyed baby for me. So one evening they were all drinking and carrying on in the gallery of grandmothers houses, with the rest of the children sitting inside pretending to watch television. We had already moved to another house after about a year. When Joel, an officer mind you, intoxicated as usual called his dog. This dog was crazy, it ran down anything that moved. When it was younger we had fun with it, until it bigger we avoided it and it's crazy eyes.
They were hollering and hooting at how the dog kept walking back and forth in front of the house like he was just waiting for one of us to come outside. So they got it in their rum soaked heads to do just that. My youngest brother, was about five at the time and didn't give a shit about nobody, so they didn't like him very much. Always answered back, so he became their intended target. Joel picked him up and put him over the banister. My brothers and I absolutely lost it, we started crying and shoving to get to him but they were preventing us from doing so. All I remember is tip-toeing over the banister yelling at my brother not to run but he's a child, whose confronted by a friggin frothing by the mouth dog so of course he is going to run like a mad man. Everything happened like a whirlwind after that, my second brother had a temper. One minute he's calm and the coolest person on earth, the next he's huffing and puffing and someone is gonna need an ambulance. He said or did something to Joel that resulted in Joel grabbing him by the arm, dragging him outside and placing him stomach down on a pile of red ants. I think I stopped breathing that very second. In my shock I remember my mother taking hold of me and my oldest brother before he did something and steadily dragged us out of the house, leaving my second brother crying his heart out while being covered by ants with a big foot on his back holding him still. Everyone else sitting and laughing like fucking hyenas. Sad to say if one of them needed a organ transplant I would have bombed every hospital just so they could die a painful death.
(I wouldn't by the way because that is wrong. I would though in my head)
Things like that steadily happened in around that household. I like to think there was where we got the worst of it because in my new school, Indian Walk Government, there wasn't any bullying going on. It became my sanctuary away from all those crazy people. The school was old and rustic and had an abundance of characters. To this day I have a friend I met there, Jude. He always made me laugh but he had this quirk where he would write straight across the copy book page to the other resulting in his father having to come to school like everyday. I loved it there, but there is never a time where comfort is a luxury for me. Because the school was a disaster waiting to happen, they transferred all the students to nearby surrounding schools and demolished it.
This new school was a nightmare. I don't think bullying was a norm there but the minute I reached, they made an exception. Fifth Company Anglican School was home away from home. Both primary I had attended before were very close to me house but this one we needed a bus. At this point both my older brothers were collected by my father but my little brother and I were left with our mother. That day was hell, when I saw him I though black Jesus had come to take me away only to be sorely disappointed when he didn't even fight for me and just took my brothers and left. To this day he talks as if I conspired with my mother to leave him or something. If he had told me those things at the time I would have given him it hood style...
I mean really, my schedule was already full with lunch time beatings and stealth manoeuvres.
Fifth Company Anglican graduation rate sucked balls. The number of students who actually passed for seven year schools was so slim, I don't even think students even tried just knowing they were all just gonna be placed in the local junior secondary. Hence leaving them with a lot of friggin free time. My first day there in third standard, a girl who could have easily passed as the worlds tallest girl started following me around the school. I didn't sense any malice so I let her continue her weird stalking until the teacher realised she had found a guinea pig in me and strapped me down lunch time so that I could help the girl with a alphabet. It was fun, until I decided I had enough and joined the cricket team. The girl's sister didn't like me abandoning her too much so they retaliated. First was my box lunch. They would hide it, empty the contents on my desk, did through it with their fingers and or switch out my meat if it is bigger than theirs. Then came the pushing and shoving after school. They couldn't do on the compound because there was one teacher who could see for miles. To get to the bus after school was a Low budget Mission Impossible remake every time. They would literally stand in front the gate and take off after me when they spot me.
I can't say for how long that lasted but after they forgot about, a guy who was in a standard above me picked up the mantle. He didn't last long either but he did one thing to me that to this day make my gut heave and skin crawl.
With those boxed breakfast they always brought for us, the one that was most constant was the bread and cheese. I stepped away to go wash my hands and when I came back the boy was in my class sitting on a desk in the back of the class. Should have learned form the first time it happened but yet again I ignored my spidey senses and proceeded to eat. It was only after I finished he busted out laughing.
"You actually eat all of it, I spit in it!"
Lets just say I never ate anything from school, other people, relatives or even restaurants for over a year after that. Good news is I lost weight.
Eating became a chore, I would get stomach cramps whenever someone offered me food. LET'S JUST SAY PEOPLE THOUGHT I WAS A SNOB.
After that the bullying came to a screeching halt. What I can say is that after I started immersing my self in all the sporting activities, I automatically became cool. So basically being a social recluse ticked people off. I don't know why me reading a book during lunch time or doing projects early tend to tick stupid children off but there it is.
Over the rest of my time there I became a sought of buffer for the other misfits. I may have made friends with the 'popular' kids but I still indulged myself in some intelligent conversation once in a while. I talked to everyone, even down to the cleaners. There was no one who didn't know who Merlene Dunbar was. It may sound like bragging but a smile can go a long way. Through all the shit I had to endure when I was home, I always left it there whenever I put on my school uniform and cross the threshold to go for the bus.
I believe that that kind of thinking lead to me developing my coping mechanism for selfish and mind boggling people. If you can't beat em' keep smiling at them they eventually get scared and leave you alone. I don't have any enemies. I have gotten so good and keeping the peace that people don't have a bad thing to say about my person. They can bitch about how I dress or my opinions and such but personality wise and my well being? Is all good.
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