musings upon bullying and fear….

Just a word or two about fear.

We moved a lot when I was a kid, and I was the subject of some merciless bullying when we got to new places.  One example is Mike Waller who sat behind me in 6th grade music class and hit me over the head with his book when the teacher’s back was turned...repeatedly.  For weeks. The 25-30 kids in class tittered.  I didn’t cry.  I never told anybody. I was the new kid, I was shy, and what authority would listen?  And as teens will tell you, if you speak up your ass gets kicked ten times worse. The little...well, she is not so little anymore as a fifth grader...daughter of a friend of ours has all these Diaries of a Wimpy Kid books at home.  It is about that sort of sh!t, and about trying to do the right thing in a world full of bullies and social stigma.  I can see why kids would like that stuff, because the kid can be a hero and set things right in the end.  I don’t know if Mike Waller died young of some horrible and painful, disfiguring disease, but if you believe in karma, he will get his.  Except, so often, really, bullies don’t, they go on to lead happy and prosperous lives.  Sometimes those guys even get elected president of the USA.

We didn’t put an HRC sign in our yard, because, secretly, I was afraid.  Afraid of the pickups that drive by on our very busy road, including (although we live in the NORTH) some with Confederate flags.   Those dudes might have guns.  When HRC ran for senate here in NY some years ago, my next door neighbor’s yard sign was flattened by a pickup that drove across their lawn to do so. They didn’t want to put up signs anymore.  They have kids in the house.

I have been into a synagogue only 3 times in my life, although I have known Jewish people all my life.  They look and act and think exactly like me.  Except I am a Quaker and know very little about Judaism.  The 3 times I have been into that synagogue I have wondered at the likely difference of being any ordinary American who might go to Temple one day and a swastika would be painted on the door.  Or a window smashed.  Or a bomb thrown through the window. These things happen to Jews all the time around the world, and in America too.  It has been decades or centuries since anybody has harassed Quakers in meeting, as far as I know, or gone out of their way to be simply violent to us as a group.  So when I was in that synagogue having fun at a holiday fair, looking at little kids who are like any other little kid, I wondered what kind of person could hate somebody as a group.  Not even knowing them, you could just throw a rock through the window, or a bomb?  I asked friends from that synagogue about security--they have cameras, and procedures for safety.  Quakers don’t.  Do white Baptist churches worry about these things?  Presbyterians?  Do they have wire mesh on the windows and security cameras everywhere? How about black churches?  Why do we hear of so many burned to the ground here in the US?  What sort of devil would do these things?

We have an African-American neighbor married to a white woman...how on Earth do they feel?  Scared as hell.  And this, on the edge of what has been called the most liberal city in the USA.

I don’t have to face those sorts of things as a straight WASP male who didn’t even have an HRC sign in his yard.  I just want to be left alone to make my pots.  Shouldn't everyone be left alone?  But sh!t, a whole lot of people don’t have that luxury right now, because the fucking bully WON.  He is on his way to the White House.