A Forgotten Story – The Sewer (1974)

I have mentioned before how our brains have a tendancy to put certain memories in the far backs of our heads. They are forgotten there, until sometimes a trigger can bring them forward.

Pretty much all of my stories I have told on this blog are from my days in Lexington, MA. But, something triggered me to remember the earliest incident I can recall the other day. I’ll call this the Sewer Incident. It’s more of a minor story, but still was an early bullying in my life. I don’t know why I had forgotten it, because when I recalled it, I realized how scary it was when I was only 6 years old in 1974.

We were living in Bowie, MD at the time. I was in 1st grade and took a long bus ride to school. I recall only fleeting memories of what happened, but my older sister was with me to help me recall more.

The bus stop was at a sewer. I was a pretty small kid and, of course, there were kindergarten to 6th grade kids at the bus. One of the older kids had taken the sewer cap off the sewer. Of course these were very heavy metal things.

For some reason they chose me that day. They put me down in the sewer. I can’t recall if it was a bet or just a forced concept, but they made me climb down there. Then they put the lid back on it.

It was dark. I yelled for them to let me up. Instead they sat on it and taunted me from below. I recall just crying and being quite scared. Years later, the author Stephen King made me realize I was not alone in my fears of the dark sewer in his book “IT”.

My sister was yelling for them to stop and let me up. When they didn’t, she started running home and told them she was going to get my parents to come down. Once they heard that, they changed their minds and let me out.

OK, not the worst story and probably more of a joke to them than true bullying, but still something that scared a small 6 year old. I recall years later being offered the chance to go down the sewers at my college for what was billed as a fun night of sewer running by my college friends. I respectfully declined the invitation.

Vanessa Van Petten and Radical Parenting

Sometimes you find something out that you wish you had known about earlier. Such is the case with my finding out about Vanessa Van Petten. If you are asking “who is she?”, that is exactly what I was saying. But I hope, after you read this blog entry, you will check out her site as well. I am very impressed at her concept and that she has continued to keep it alive.

What Vanessa did was write a book called “You’re Grounded!”.  What’s more interesting is that she wrote it when she was a teenager during a time when she was grounded and stuck at home. She took her anger at her situation and sat down and wrote a teen perspective book about parenting. Pretty smart, I’d say. She also posted several videos to YOUTUBE as well on various parenting subjects. I came across this one on Cyberbullying she had done:

I recently received a comment from one of her teen writers of what is now her website called Radical Parenting. I checked it out and really enjoyed how it’s put together. Vanessa has a staff of teen and tween writers that offer advice to parents from the teen/tween perspective. Hmmmm, somewhat similar to an adult offering bullying advice from an adult perspective.

Anyway, if you think that sounds interesting, check out her website, Radical Parenting, by clicking here. I think you will find it both interesting and also find some good articles about bullying issues there.

Answering the Why Question

Lately several people ask me why I continue to blog about the bullying issue and, particularly my mother, wants to know when I’ll “get over it”. It’s always funny for me to hear these things, because I am over it. I’m not doing this for me, but, at least in my mind, to help others and present a history of bullying from the perspective of an adult who can look back to see both the negative effect, as well as some positive effects.

Have I taken it on the chin some? I would say YES. There are certainly some who see my telling of these stories and doing this website as some sort of psychological weakness and they chose to try to exploit it. See kids, bullying doesn’t end when you grow up all the time. It just changes some (but sometimes not).

I consider myself pretty lucky in that I have surrounded myself with people who I respect and who share that back. I have wonderful friends and a great family. Others both good and bad have come and gone over the years, but those that are left, well, I couldn’t ask for better people. Of course that wasn’t the case during the bullying years. Sure, I felt alone at times and seeing the future wasn’t a likely reality. But life is a series of peaks and valleys. Getting through the valley periods are work and that is no lie.

Recently I was faced, as many others have been, with a valley period when I had to find new employment. It’s at these critical times when you find out who your friends are. People who helped me network for my new job. Everyone I talked to was so helpful. It turned what could have been a very blue and negative period into a positive moment.

2009 has been a rough year, not just for me, but for many of my friends and for many people with the downturn in the economy. Recently one friend of mine, my best friend, my friend who I have had since I was 15 and who lives 6 houses away from me on my street, was faced with not one, not two, but three different cancers in his body. He had to have three operations to have them all removed. Luckily for him, they were all treatable.

What I will never forget was the opportunity that I saw presented to him. When the first diagnosis happened, the word got out to not just his current friends, but now with Facebook and Web 2.0, to all his old friends as well. They all came back to him to see if they could help. Friends from High School, College, and old work friends all called to him. In one morbid conversation, I shared with him that, in some way he was lucky. That most of us let life get behind us and don’t have the opportunity to know how many friends we truly have until they are at our funeral. I know, it’s morbid, but in some ways true. We forget about all the people that care about us and that we have met that we affected somehow. We mean to call on them and they mean to also, but time has a way of getting by us.

So why am I talking about this on the bullying blog? I think it’s important to remember, and to share with our children that life has peaks and valleys. Sometimes being bullied is one of those valleys. But even then, we should try to surround ourselves with people that we care about and that care about us. Over time those people will be there again and again. And then the peaks come and we can see over the summit again. It can get better. It does get better. That’s what I hope you remember when you walk in the valley.

Another Good Cyberbullying PSA

I thought this cyberbullying PSA below was very good. It was produced by a group called Netsmartz.org. Take a watch:

Cyberbullying Video Highlights Prob

I found this short video put together highlighting the Cyber-bullying problem with a focus on the Megan Meir case. I thought I’d share it with you. It seems like the cyber-bullying issue is picking up steam in hopes that it can be dealt with a little smarter than we have recently.

Chris Pirillo Talks About Bullying

Chris Pirillo, an internet blogger and you tuber (is that the correct term?) created a vodcast on bullying that was both frank and smartly done. While it was done a while ago, it is still completely relevant. I hope you get something out of it.

Lori Drew Verdict Thrown Out

If you’ve been following the Megan Mier cyberbullying case, then this is big news. Lori Drew, the mother who impersonated a boy interested in Megan online only to bully her because Lori’s daughter didn’t like her. Eventually, Megan committed suicide due to the harassment.

Mrs. Drew was put on trial and convicted of misdemeanors in the case by a jury. But on July 3rd, when most of the country was not paying attention due to the holiday, the judge in the case overturned the conviction, basically letting Mrs. Drew off the hook. Why am I not surprised.

In an article in Wired Online, John C Abell writes that: 

But what if Megan had been taunted in private by a real teen for whom she had some feelings and hoped had for her? Suppose she had been told to her face that the world would be a better place without her, perhaps even to snickering and other body language that would rub salt into the wound? Suppose such an encounter had been witnessed, perpetrated in the schoolyard or lunchroom, escalated for the approval of the crowd who piled on and made the “Carrie“-like humiliation even more palpable?

In neither of these scenarios would a criminal prosecution be viable, it seems to me. Bullying with no physical contact is generally handled by school administrators and parents (when it is at all), not as a criminal matter but in ways that aim to modify the behavior of the tormentor and separate stalker and prey as best as possible.

While I agree in principle with the above argument, at what point do we start to take these bullying incidents more seriously? Just because the past way things were handled was OK, as modern adults I think we should try to enact change to both stop, prevent, and help those who are bullied and are bullies.

Picture courtesy of Wired.com

What Mrs. Drew did was egregious in my opinion. As an adult she should have known better. I can understand the above argument of children on playgrounds and not prosecuting them. But the argument to treat an adult who does this is not the same.

So nothing has changed for now. There is still no legal precedent to prevent cyberbullying and have it viewed as a crime. While Mrs. Drew may be ostracized by her community and the public, no time will be served and no punishment will appear in the legal books. One day, maybe that will change, but for today, it is a lost case.

CBS News Video on Bullying

CBS recently aired a video piece about a new study by doctors. It’s an excellent video that talks about getting more school and parent awareness. One interesting statistic from the study shows that 60% of bullies had one criminal conviction by age 24. More reason to help both the victim and the bully. See the video below. You may have to double click it to see it in YouTube since embedding is turned off:

Another Good Bully Blog

I came across another good bully blog called “PSSST! BULLIES ARE B-O-R-I-N-G!” In the about area, it explains it’s written by a mom of a boy who spoke up about a bully and the school did nothing. Not an uncommon theme in any of these bully story sites. Take a visit to the site. It’s got some good articles and links. The about section says:

I’m the proud mom of a young man who spoke up about the bully who was standing in the way of his getting an education. A wonderful kid, my fifth-grade son attended a well-respected private school in Dallas. And while his classmates were learning reading, math, social studies, science and other academic subjects, my son was struggling daily to manage a bully.

Once my son spoke up, it didn’t take our family long to realize the answer to the problem was to leave the school. The institution had no formal policy surrounding bullying, was unwilling to punish the bully, did not make the bully apologize, and was ultimately unable to curtail the bullying.

As the parents of survivors of bullying will tell you, that is a very typical experience. Schools seldom act effectively to stop bullying. If you think I’m wrong about that, go report the bullying at your school and see what happens. You may be surprised. We were. Never would we have dreamed that the school would value the bully over the student being bullied. This blog is an effort to help educate everyone about bullying, and hopefully make progress to stop it, so that kids who go to school to learn will be able to do so.

Close To Home

I have a very close relationship with my children (although they are not children much anymore). This is important to me to try to maintain and I believe important to them. One of the added benefits to having a good strong relationship with your children is that you get to know their friends. Some of their friends I have known since the day they were born and that gives me a good insight to them.

So, this weekend one of their lifelong friends who I have known since he was born came over. Out of all the years I have known this boy, he is always smiling and positive. He is a good kid, but bookish and shy, who is more comfortable reading a book than interacting with people. I have known quite a few people like this. They are shy and usually quite brilliant when you can talk to them.

Well, when he walked in I could really tell that he was unhappy. He actually seemed angry and withdrawn. It definitely bothered me, because I had never seen him like this. I asked my son what was up and he told me that the boy was being picked on pretty bad at school and that he was pretty down about it.

Feeling Alone

This boy was exhibiting physical aspects to this. He was withdrawn and seemed untrusting of all of us. He certainly wasn’t going to talk to any of us about it. It really worried me. Lately I have seen this from several friends of my sons. Not that surprising, because they are in that age point (10-14) where I recall the worst bullying happens. In the couple of instances where the parents did open up I offered to be a mentor to their child and talk with them about both my experiences and theirs. Both times I received the same reaction from the parents.

‘Oh no…thank you, but he doesn’t want to talk about it.’

Of course that goes against what I think, that he should talk about it and understand he is not alone. That others have gone through and are going through this. That help is around them. But I don’t say anything. How can I? I’m not the parent and they need to decide what’s best. So how do I educate the parent to help their son or daughter? What can I do? I guess that’s the question that I’m asking. Any suggestions from the peanut gallery? The biggest thing to me is that they don’t feel hurt. That they know they are not alone. It’s really hard to watch it happen around you. What can we do to make it better?