Every year my wife gets out the Charlie Brown DVD series. In October we watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Every year I’m horrified by Lucy’s behavior. You’ve probably heard about her pulling the football away as Charlie runs up to kick it, resulting in Charlie falling and breaking several vertebrae, shattering both legs, and waking up from a coma several months later to find he’s a paraplegic. That’s one level of mean. But Lucy kicks it up a notch. In one scene, Charlie gets an invitation to a Halloween party in the mail and is so happy he does an excited dance.
“There are two lists, Charlie Brown: people who should be invited and people who shouldn’t. You must’ve gotten put on the wrong list by accident.”
Ouch. So she’s good at psychological harm as well. Charlie is the perpetual whipping boy, getting rocks while everyone gets candy, having people laugh at him and his costume. But Lucy seems to get her jollies by systematically tearing him apart. Maybe I thought this was funny as a kid, or it just flew over my head. But now I can hardly watch her. She dresses up as a witch for Halloween but I think her costume idea was one letter off.
So I’m posing the question to my readers: do you remember the worst bully from your school days? Was it better to be punched in the face or the psyche? Chime in and let’s see who has the worst scars!
Writer, architect, father, husband.
I was in 5th grade and this kid named Trevor who I was in school with from kindergarten through high school was never very kind. He would say things like, "your dad looks old like a grandpa" just to make me sad as a kid.
At the end of that year, our teacher got us all those paper booklets you use to write essay exams in and we could use them as "yearbooks" to have our classmates sign and write summer well-wishes in. I got mine back at the end of the last day and saw the message from Trevor:
"Dear Erin, you're fat. Get on a diet. From Trevor."
Fifth grade. And I certainly wasn't overweight then. Busted my confidence pretty bad until I became a wise-ass bitch.
I loathe bullies more than anything. Just remember all you bullies out there..what goes around comes around.
A couple years after I graduated high school I saw one of the popular bullies. I was wearing a suit to go to a capitol hill internship in DC. I pulled into a gas station on my way to work and he was pumping gas. Nothing needed to be said.
I didn't have bullies when i was a kid, I just have the rare meanie patient now. I had a patient tell me she hated me, then said, no offense, and said that I was "not very thorough" after I spent 2 hours with her in the office. She is obviously psychotic.
I still remember this girl that I went to grade school with whose name was Camila. She liked to spread lies about me. That name bugs me to this day.