But what I remember most from those years is something very different: persistent, daily, unrelenting teasing. Not bullying, necessarily. Just teasing.
I don’t remember when the problem began, but I do remember going from a girl who couldn’t wait to go to kindergarten and who “played school†every chance I got, to begging to stay home because of stomachaches and headaches. My mom told me that in about third grade I changed from being open and bubbly to trying not to be noticed, and it was at about that time that I finally mentioned something to her about an incident at a school Christmas party, the details of which are complicated but that involved being excluded in a very public way. My mom talked to the teacher, who then had a conference with nearly every child in the school and even some of their parents. The topic of discussion, much to the mortification of my introverted self, was me. One problem with being the object of teasing in such a small school is that there is nowhere to hide, no group of fellow Breakfast Club outcasts to join.
Looking back, I see that I was ripe for teasing. I was a quirky girl who liked to pretend to be characters from my favorite books. I remember clearly going through a Heidi phase, including serving myself snacks of plain bread and hunks of cheese, just as Grandpa made for Heidi and Peter (the difference being that my slabs were cut from big blocks of government cheese, distributed on the Rosebud Indian Reservation where we lived and traded to us for eggs). I wore thick glasses that did not correct a tendency for crossed eyes caused by a congenital condition—not diagnosed until I was in college—called Duane Syndrome.
But do not worry: this is no story of self-pity. I was a teaser myself, often using a quick and even sharp tongue to make up for my awkwardness in social situations. I was quite confident (“snottyâ€), assertive (“bossyâ€), imaginative and nervous (“just plain weirdâ€). In current parlance, I was also in severe need of interpersonal communication skills.
Perhaps because of my own experience, I am wary of the pat advice that all children just need to learn how to take teasing. While it is true that teasing is a part of life and can be done in a playful way, I have yet to meet a single person who feels that the experience of being teased helped her simply to shrug off the feelings or effects, or that it made him a better person. In a SmartGirl.org survey about teasing, respondents indicated that they were teased most often about their appearance, friends, grades, and weight. How many young sensitive girls (or boys) can shrug off negative comments, however playful, about these things?
In an article for parents about teasing, Dr. Patricia A. Schuler offers this advice:
“What shouldn’t parents do? Don’t minimize the situation by suggesting that everyone gets teased. Telling children it’s their problem and to stand up for themselves only makes them feel even more inadequate and powerless. Don’t call the teaser and ‘reward’ him/her with an invitation to discuss and negotiate a plan to stop the teasing by offering rewards. Don’t call the teaser’s parents to complain. It may make the situation worse.â€
When I was in my thirties, I read Jerry Spinelli’s Stargirl, and many of the memories of those grade school years came rushing back to me. Stargirl is the story of a new girl in school who is shunned for being different. At one point, she enlists the help of the narrator to learn how to fit and be popular: “She constantly quizzed me about what other kids would do, would buy, would say, would think. She invented a fictitious person whom she called Evelyn Everybody. ‘Would Evelyn like this?’ ‘Would Evelyn do that?’â€
In my case, once the student-teacher conferences were over and the dust had settled, I had made two decisions. The first was that I would study the other children and learn how to fit in better. I began to dress like them, talk like them, like what they liked, not like what they didn’t like. In grade school, I was only partially successful in my project, but by the time I went to our county-wide high school and had a fresh start, I was a pro. I had friends. I was soon elected to student council. All the comments in my yearbooks were “To a really nice girl†and encouraged me to “Stay just the way you are. Don’t change.†I smiled until my cheeks hurt. I laughed at everyone’s jokes. I became whomever I was with. I offended no one.
I was very, very good at it.
But if you had asked me what my favorite music was, or movie or book, or what was unique about my inner experience, or what my opinion was about anything, important or otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. It took years and years to undo the self-transformation I undertook in grade school, and just as long to begin to realize that my desire not to be teased had become confused with a desire to please everyone, all the time, an impossible if not soul-draining task. What a relief it was in my thirties to begin to get to know myself, all over again. It’s a continual work in progress.
The second decision grew from something the teacher told me after those embarrassing conferences. She said that the main teaser in the school had, in years past, been the object of chronic teasing herself, and that this had been a pattern in the school for years: someone who was targeted for teasing when young grew into the role of the teaser ring leader.
Tags:
breakfast club, christmas party, eighth grade, entire school, favorite books, flexibility, happy valley, headaches, heidi, kindergarten, little house on the prairie, mortification, nowhere to hide, outcasts, s books, school christmas, sixth grade, snacks, stomachaches, teasing, teasing and bullying, third grade
