The Bully

Back when I was in the first grade, there was a kid in my class who always picked on me.

He was bigger than me; taller and wider. And, whereas my outfits were what I would have then called “nerdy” at best, he always wore tough-kid clothes: tattered jeans instead of slacks, boots instead of shoes, and a dirty t-shirt instead a blouse.

I still remember his name, even though it’s been nearly fifty years since I last saw or thought of him.

One dreary first-grade day, this kid went from taunting me to announcing that he was going to beat me up, and that the beating was going down that afternoon. He challenged—or was it threatened?—me to appear after school at the playground where, in front of whoever came to watch, he’d do the deed. He sweetened the story by adding a pretty graphic description of how the fight would end. And he said if I didn’t show up, I’d be a chicken, and everyone at school would know it.

I’m not going to lie, I was afraid of this kid. Terrified even. He could easily beat my ass, no question. I was equally sure it would hurt.

But what the bully didn’t know was that, even though he scared me, I was even more afraid of my dad. Back then, dad looked just like Robert De Niro in Midnight Run: slight but confident, and with a healthy dose of menace. He even wore the same long leather jacket as De Niro’s character, Jack Walsh.

Starting when I was young, and continuing through to when I wasn’t, my dear dad made it clear to me that I wasn’t allowed to back down from a fight, even if the chances were good that I’d lose. The beating any kid—or later, a grownup—could lay on me paled in comparison to what my dad said he could, and would, do if I didn’t stand up for myself.

(In hindsight, maybe this is why, as a grownup myself, I now do research on problems that give rise to difficult tradeoffs.)

I remember this particular school day being really awful. The feeling in the pit of my stomach was as if I swallowed a beehive. To say I wasn’t looking forward to the end of the school day would be a massive understatement. Staring down a beating, no matter who was going to lay it on me, ruined my day. The only small consolation was it would be from someone who, relative to my dad, was only a little bigger than me. But I’ll freely confess that I still cried in the bathroom over how the day was going to end.

When 3:00 pm finally arrived, I made the somber march to the playground as if I was being led to the gallows. I was accompanied by what felt like all 400 or so of the other kids from my school. A few of the kids who came with me were my friends who, I think, stuck with me to ease my pain. But there was never any doubt in my mind that they were only going to attend as spectators, not as referees, and certainly not as co-combatants.

I arrived at the playground first. The ensuing wait for the kid who said he was going to kick my ass felt interminable. No amount of self-reflection or small talk from the live studio audience could quiet my anxiety.

Time ticked away. 3:00 pm gave way to 3:05 pm, which slowly gave way to 3:10 pm.

As more time passed, the audience began to thin. Like me, the other kids from my school had orange buses to catch.

My own bus was scheduled to depart at 3:30 pm, which left me with a dilemma. Bail on the fight to catch the bus but get it from my dad. Or stay and wait for the bully and get it from my mom because she’d be the one who the school would call if the bus left and I wasn’t on it.

I decided to wait.

And I kept waiting.

Eventually, I missed the bus.

I ended up waiting until almost 4:00 pm. I remember this because I caught hell from my teacher when I wasn’t on the bus and no one could find me. A missing kid was a problem, it turns out, even in the early 1970s.

In the end, the bully never showed up. Not then, and not for any of the other fights he challenged me to a handful of times later that same school year.

The first few times, he tried to save face in front of me and the other kids by saying fighting me wasn’t worth his time. But after a few missed bouts, all with the same non-outcome, something dawned on me: he, not me, was the chicken. Like a lot of bullies: a coward. All talk. No result.

Well before the end of the first grade, the bully started to give me a wide berth. And by the time the second grade rolled around, he was gone from my life forever.

I was reminded of this episode when I was reading the newspaper this morning. Turns out the world is full of bullies who, underneath it all, are really just cowardly and fragile little boys.

Take it from the first grade version of me: the only way you lose to those bullies is by not showing up for the fight in the first place.