Is It Just Me?: Or is it Nuts Out There? Page 15

  It’s a terrorist act.

  It’s meant to make you feel afraid. It’s meant to make you feel powerless to take care of the situation you find yourself in. And even when you try to, not enough adults take bullying seriously. Know what’s clear to me? People don’t realize that bullying has come so very far since many of us were little kids. Back then, if you ran into a bully, you could go get your big brother or big sister.

  Today, you’ve got cyber-bullying. Cyber-bullying is different. First of all, it’s very cowardly. The bully can choose to hide behind the anonymity of the Internet. And when bullying happens on the Web, it has no boundaries, so it’s even more emotionally and psychologically charged. If you are the victim . . . you can’t leave it behind at the bus stop or the hallway or the cafeteria. It’s everywhere, and that’s what I think makes cyber-bullying so much worse. It continues after the school day—and it gets broadcast.

  Before the days of the Web and social networks, when you were getting bullied at school, it was just the kids at school who knew. But not kids in other schools. Not a million people around the world reading these things about you on the Internet.

  And there’s no way to combat the lie or fight the ugly once it’s put out there. The ugly stays forever like a bad fart. It’s always there. And you can’t get it off the Internet.

  I believe adults should step up and do more to stop this. But it’s not getting done. Why is it that a kid can come and tell parents and teachers that this is happening, and everybody agrees it needs to stop—but nobody does anything? It reminds me of a famous New York news story from back in the mid-1960s. A young woman named Kitty Genovese was walking home from work one night, and she was attacked and stabbed. And she screamed and screamed and screamed. Her entire neighborhood heard it. Nobody helped her. A similar thing happened more recently in the Bay Area where a high school girl was gang-raped outside her school dance. A crowd of people stood by and nobody helped her.

  What is missing that helping isn’t even a second thought in people’s minds?

  What does a victim of bullying need to do to be heard? I mean, what better way is there to be heard than to walk up to the adults who are there in school to help the situation? Beyond that, where is there protection? If the adults don’t give a damn, where are we?

  I hear stories now that teachers are being bullied by students too. A common complaint is that they are told by kids right there in their classroom to fuck off. Well, here’s a very good way to deal with them. If you say fuck off to a teacher in school, you get suspended. It’s that simple.

  It’s like a child who won’t behave on the train, and the mother quietly says, “Stop that. Quit it. Put that down . . . I’m coming over there . . .” And then the misbehaving continues and she does nothing. If you’re going to deal with kids, you have to be ready to deal with them. You have to follow through and there have to be consequences.

  I don’t understand when it became OK for the kids to tell adults the rules. What does it say about us? What are we telling the kids? We talk all about the forms incivility takes today. I see bullying as the clearest example of how incivility is running amok.

  I put a lot of it on the adults. You know, adults from just a generation or two ago would not have put up with that crap. If somebody came to 90 percent of those adults and said, “I’m getting bothered all the time, they’re messing with me, and I’ve tried ignoring them, I’ve tried to fight back, and, you know, I’m despondent . . .” those grown-ups would have listened. Most adults back then would say, “OK, we’re going down to that school right now and find out what’s happening. And I’m going to talk to so-and-so’s mother.” And the kid would, of course, say, “No, no, don’t do that! It’ll make it worse.” But the parent—the responsible parent—would say, “Well, I am going to talk to somebody and get to the bottom of this.” It simply would not have been taken so lightly when a child came to you and said something was wrong.

  And the adults in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where that bullied fifteen-year-old-girl committed suicide, seemingly were aware of it . . . So what the hell?!

  You cannot ask children to respect anything if you’re not going to respect it. If a kid comes to you and says, “I’m really having a tough time here,” and you don’t respect that enough to follow through, what is that saying to the other kids? It’s telling them that nobody cares. It says to kids that they’re out there on their own. And, as we have seen too many times, if you think you’re out there on your own, and you think there’s only one way to go, you kill yourself. And sometimes, other people.

  And kids are not the only ones victimized by bullies. You can be thirty-five and messing with a bully. Bullies are bullies at any age or any place. But whether it’s in school or at work, bullies are not acceptable. And that’s something everybody has to just get on top of.

  It’s hard, I know it, but if you are a kid who is being bullied and harassed, here is what I want to say to you: I would find some grown-up who would listen to me and I’d make as much noise as I could. For me, there comes a time when it’s enough.

  It’s the same in relationships, whether it’s adults or if it’s kids, where that person has that much power over you. So much that they can dictate what you’re going to be doing. That’s too much power to hand over to somebody. I feel very strongly that adults have to take a step back and take a look at this.

  Please. Take a look at what it means.

  What would it mean to you if someone bullied you at work? What would you do if you discovered on the company computer server that someone was spreading lies about you? But you can’t figure out who it is. And people are giving you looks, and all that. And it’s making your life miserable so you can’t work, let alone sleep or eat. That’s when you have to get up on top of the desk and go, “OK. I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore! I’m not going to do it!” It’s OK to get mad and snap. It’s not OK for someone to use someone else as a way to get their beans off.

  The question is, why have people become so emboldened? Is it because the crowd that witnesses all this doesn’t try to stop it? But that doesn’t necessarily mean they like what the bully is doing. It could be that they are afraid too. But how can one bully hold more power than eight or nine people together? What happens if the bunch turns on the bully? People use this excuse all the time. “Oh, I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want them to start bullying me.” Well, if you know that there are four other people who don’t like what’s happening, you have more power than the bully.

  You have the power.

  Besides kids getting examples set by adult bullies, what can we trace it back to? Is it what they see on TV? Is it the Housewives of New York, or Beverly Hills, or wherever? Is it Rush Limbaugh? Is it Keith Olberman? Is it these shows on TV like Gossip Girl, where the kids are just plain nasty? They’re nasty about each other. They’re nasty about other people who they perceive to be lower in the world than they are. They’re characters with no redeeming qualities. Why are we OK with that? Why don’t we like people with redeeming qualities? When did that change? Maybe people with redeeming qualities are boring. But fewer people hurt themselves because of boring people, even though they’re not “hot.”

  But ask yourself this. Are you actually hot when you’re an asshole? Because it’s basically what you are when you’re a bully.

  I think that both as kids and adults you kind of have to make a decision. How far are you willing to lie down for somebody? And as a parent, you cannot be your kid. You can’t bring that vibe into the house like it’s OK, we don’t need to say anything.

  Yeah, you do. You need to make noise when something is wrong.

  But at the same time, that doesn’t give you the right to be a bully yourself. If you look in the mirror and say, I’m getting bullied by somebody, therefore, I can bully, there’s a problem and you could be looking at it in the eyes.

  I don’t exactly know how many bullies were once bullied themselves. I
t depends, I guess. If they got out of school and said, “That’s never going to happen to me again, I’m going to go on the offensive,” they could become bullies. If they got out of school and they said, “Oh my God, my life is always going to be like this,” then, I suppose, they lie down.

  But I have to say, in my opinion, if you’re watching on the little kids’ playground and you see your kid is a potential bully, that’s when you have to nip that in the bud. It’s not cool because there’s your son—with his little penis and you with your big penis—and you think, yeah, he’s standing up for himself.

  Is he?

  You may feel proud and say, “He’s a fighter, that one.”

  Yeah, but who is he fighting? And who are you? What are you representing to your child? Again, it comes back to what makes this OK. When did it change that there was no policeman in your head saying, “You know what? That’s really not a good way to go.”

  Is this going on because faith in the system at large has failed? Is it because people figure they’re going to get theirs while the getting’s good? Or thinking, nobody’s gonna stop me?

  But why not? Are teachers that busy? . . . Or are they that scared?

  But then what? It’s just lawless.

  If you’re not going to stand up and say, “No fucking more,” not one more kid is going to have to go through this, then who is going to stand up? And if you, as a teacher, don’t feel like you’re strong enough to be in that classroom—because that’s part of the teaching profession, to teach young people that this is not acceptable behavior—then maybe there’s a better profession for you. And that’s the bottom line of it, if you can’t do the job. ’Cause the job is not just the numbers and the words and the letters on the blackboard, it’s forming and shaping young people. Engaging them. And if you can’t engage them enough to keep them from beating each other up, then you have anarchy in the school.

  If you’re afraid, and you know the kids are afraid . . . where do you go from there? Does it mean you have to make friends with the biggest, baddest dude on the football team? Maybe. Unless he’s the bully. Which he probably isn’t because he doesn’t have to be. And he doesn’t have the time.

  Where do you go from there?

  OK, here’s an idea. You start a club. You say to young kids, “Listen, this is a club that’s looking out for other students who may not have anybody walking with them. This is a club because when you get out in the real world you want to look after one another and you want to be looked after. You want to feel like somebody’s got your back. Let’s start it now.”

  Also, there’s nothing stopping teachers from starting clubs like that for themselves to get some support. Have a teacher’s meeting and say, “Who’s afraid of their class? And can you identify the elements of your fear in your classroom? Who do you think is getting bullied? Who do you think is bullying?” Then you say, “OK, Mr. Principal, these are the kids we’re afraid of. So we’re going to start a new class—just for all of them. We’re having Officer So-and-so come in. And he’s going to take them to the penitentiary.”

  It’s a field trip! It’ll be just like Scared Straight!

  You want to let people see what bullying is like? Take them to the pen. And then see what real bullying is like.

  And then you say to them, “Now, this is what you guys do. Whether you’re doing it on the Internet, or you’re doing it physically or psychologically, this is what you’re doing. Remember that feeling you had in the pen that he was going to mess you up? That’s what it’s like for other people with you. So put yourself in that other position. Now that you have been in that position, you know what it’s like. Do you want other people to feel this?”

  For some people the answer is yes. So those are the ones, you say, “OK, until you can get your shit together, you can’t come to our school.”

  And the school administrators have to say to their parents, “Hey, listen, we don’t know what you’re going to do with your kid. But he gets one more shot. And you’d better get on this because, otherwise, he’s going to be sitting on your lap at work with you. Take your kid . . . and leave. He can’t be here. We’re not going to allow this.”

  It’s all about taking responsibility. But will we really do that? I wonder.

  Why don’t we have as much zeal about these terrorists, the terrorists of our children and our workplace and our lives? Bullies are terrorists. They make you live scared, that’s what terrorists do. But why aren’t we treating bullies the same way we treat terrorists?

  And Google and MySpace and Facebook and all those places, why aren’t they picking up on this? Why aren’t there committees that are out there combing for this too, and alerting people? The police monitor Internet chat rooms for predators, why not for bullies? Is it too much work? It’s not as much work as a funeral.

  So if no one is going to take responsibility, kiss your kids very carefully every night.

  Chapter 69

  Self-Test: Am I a Bully?

  Is there a person you regularly make threatening comments to, or give intimidating looks to, at work or school?

  If no, score 0

  If yes, score 5

  Does it make you feel better that you do this?

  If no, score 2

  If yes, score 5

  Is it possible that you hurt somebody or taught someone else it’s OK to do the same thing?

  If you think yes, score 5

  If you think no, score 2

  Do you care?

  If yes, score 0

  If no, score 5

  Have you ever posted or forwarded a hurtful comment about another person on the Internet?

  If no, score 0

  If yes, score 5

  If you did it anonymously, score 10

  Do you only put others down when it is in front of a group?

  If no, score 0

  If yes, score 5

  Would it bother you if someone did the same thing to you?

  If yes, score 5

  If no, score 5

  Total score: ______

  Tally your score and write it in on the Master Score Sheet at the back of this book, page 195.

  Chapter 70

  Manners Don’t Take a Vacation

  I don’t care whether you are staying at a Motel 6 off the interstate or at the Four Seasons on Maui . . . it can drive you nuts the way some people behave in a hotel. I don’t mean inside their rooms. (Some of my behavior in a hotel room might raise an eyebrow or two.)

  You have that look on your face that tells me you don’t know what I’m talking about. Let me explain.

  Vacations are for fun and business trips may be for more serious purposes, but they have one thing in common . . . Your hotel stay is going to be hell if the other guests in it are inconsiderate. One of the things that people have talked about . . . and I concur . . . is noise. Hotel guest noise bites the big one.

  Actually, there aren’t many hotel peeves that chap my behind. In fact, there are only two. Both involve noise.

  Let me talk first about the doors slamming. Unless it’s used to dramatically finish an argument—it’s not cool. And for that to be cool, you have to use a British accent and say, “Good day, sir!” before you turn on your heel and slam that thing. Think about it. At home or at work, most of us close doors . . . not slam. But somehow, people think what happens in a hotel stays in a hotel. It doesn’t. ’Cause clearly, a lot of people don’t like it . . . And they’re talking about it. The doors that lead from your room to the hallway seem to be bang-friendly.

  Sometimes it’s because of the air suck created by the breeze in the hallway. Sometimes it’s because the doors are hung in such a way as to make sure they close when a guest leaves the room. So, yeah . . . they’re made to close.

  And they close loud enough—on their own—to rattle the water glass in the room up the hall. But when it slams . . . you wet your pants! Or, you’re asleep and it wakes you up. Either way, it’s not good.

  OK, so we’ve learned t
hat the design of hotel doors works against us, and here’s how we combat the god of Slam. Rest your hand on the doorknob so the door closes instead of slams. Voila! And yet nobody does it. Maybe now they will.

  The other hotel hell moment is loud talking in halls. The surest way to get people cussing someone out from within their room is some other someone walking the hotel corridor talking to the person right beside them like they were shouting over a jet engine. I mean, come on. There’s no reason for this.

  When adults do it, nine times out of ten, it’s after the bars have closed. Hey, what are you going to do?

  But sometimes, parents let their kids run wild in the halls. Hey, what kid on a vacation doesn’t love to run? And there’s that long, carpeted runway for them to just sprint down, or play tag on—shrieking in delight. Well, moms and dads, this is a chance to let your kids know what it is like to be out in the world—where there are things like rules, and manners, and consideration.

  Independence is wonderful for children, and vacations are a good way to stretch their boundaries . . . but you’ve got to help them. I also know kids are going to want to be kids, and that’s great. But they can be kids by the pool or on the beach and not right outside hotel rooms, where most people are craving peace and quiet.

  Look, I’m not fooling myself. Just like the doors that are engineered to slam, I don’t believe hotel hallways are suddenly going to becomes churchlike. But I can dream.

  But not if somebody’s noisy kids are outside my door.

  Chapter 71

  May I Have Your Attention Please? . . . Please?

  Have you tried to have a conversation with anyone these days and just end up feeling like you only have half their attention? It can happen when you’re face-to-face with someone. Like at dinner when they keep doing that damn BlackBerry check. But know what drives me batty? When you’re on the phone and you get those . . .