Bullied: Middle School Years

Chapter 2:
Middle School: Tormented Tradition
It was the summer of 1972 and we had just settled into our rental in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. I had just come off a miserable seventh grade where puberty had exponentially compounded my bullying experiences.
It was mid-July and I had survived three weeks of constant verbal and physical pounding. I woke up that morning really excited as my best friend from school, Paul, was arriving today to spend a week. I lied in bed thinking of how it would be so nice to spend the next seven days not worried about trying to fit in. Paul didn’t tease me and we always spent lots of time talking, reading and sharing ideas. It was a Monday and Paul was expected to arrive later in the afternoon. As the norm for every sunny day, we spent the morning at the beach. Walking towards the sand, all the scenarios bounced through me head. Would I be allowed to play in the games? Would the kids all head to the jetty and not ask me to come along? Would Andy and his band of friends start calling me “Nose”?
Within minutes, everyone scattered and I found myself alone on the blanket organizing my prized baseball cards. I found solace in this time losing myself in the world of major league baseball. I would arrange the cards in numerous ways by team, statistic or position. Then I could spend hours reading every statistic of each player. To this day, I can rattle off stats in great detail of baseball significance from 1968 through 1972.
Knowing that Paul was arriving soon kept me focused and relaxed. As noon approached the kids reappeared at the blanket. Andy, Ricky and even my brother, Paul started in with the barbed digs. “Four-eyes” was still a popular line among bullies in the early seventies and I got called it often. I was blind as a bat by the time I was six and I wore those dreadful thick black glasses. Since I had to wear them for all activities they were always beat up, crooked and patched with tape. Andy grabbed them from my face and threw them around to Bobby, Dick, Joey and Johnny. David didn’t join in. He was the only one strong enough to not be swayed by the peer pressure. As the glasses were being tossed the comments about my being the smart math guy were being passed along. If only I had realized then that they were, in actuality, complimenting me.
On most days, I could work myself into an internal cocoon and remain, at least on the surface, unfazed. Today, with the accelerated angst of the arrival of my friend, my tolerance was low. I told them to “Shut up” and “Get lost”. This only egged them on and the barrage heightened. We headed off the beach as we did every day for lunch. Today was a little unusual because my grandmother was not back at the cottage. She ran things during the week and my mom and other relatives would come for the weekends. The cottages were very close together and Mrs. G. was watching us today. By the time Mrs. G. had prepared us some spaghetti, most of the kids were already on our porch preparing for the afternoon shift on the beach.
I couldn’t muster the energy to absorb any more teasing so I sat inside to eat. The boys were still caught up in their verbal taunts and they just called out one name after another at me. I told them to stop. I asked them to stop. I raised my voice and insisted that they stop. Finally, I had reached my breaking point. Picking up my plate of spaghetti, I screamed louder than I thought possible, and fired that plate at the window. Exhaling at the peak of my lung capacity I screamed, “Shut up”, “Get out”, and “Leave me alone”. The porch grew immediately silent and you could hear the spaghetti and plate squeaking as it slid down the window. I walked into the front bedroom and covered my head with a pillow. As I drifted off into a daydream, I heard comments such as, “We were just kidding”, and “Your brother takes this too seriously. As I wandered off to sleep, the boys’ conversation faded from my conscientious, as I shifted towards a safe place.