A Story About Bullying

We came from back East in 1960. My dad’s federal government job had taken us from New York to Washington D.C. and even as far as Puerto Rico, but he had decided that we would settle down in the wild western town of Arvada, Colorado. And so, we bought into a brand new subdivision at

68^th Avenue

and

Brentwood Street

. There was nothing to the north of our little subdivision but rolling hills, fields, and fox farms for the next twenty miles. I guess it appeared idyllic to my parents.

They grew up during the Depression, in Brooklyn and Brownsville, respectively. We were first and second-generation southern Italian Americans. My dad served in WWII and went on to become a lawyer at twenty two. My mom earned her degree and was an English teacher at twenty. Our family looked, spoke, and acted quite differently from our Scotch/Irish/English/German/Swedish, etc. neighbors, who haled from locales such as Fort Smith, Kearney, and Kansas City.

The day we moved in, my brother, sister, and I were walking up “our block” when we were met by a gang of armed, very pale looking children, who not so subtlety indicated (the cracking of a bull whip is what I remember) that we “Spics” needed to find another neighborhood to infest. My sister, the oldest, was confused because, to her, “Spics” were Puerto Ricans and we were Italian. So, she asked them why they were calling us Spics. There response was that “a Spic is a Damned Mexican!.” As you might have guessed, things went downhill fast from there.

Entering Kindergarten (a nice Germanic name for nice Germanic children, only) was the beginning of a six-year nightmare for me. I was the tiniest kid in the school, distinctly Olive in complexion, and had just the faintest touch of a moustache on my upper lip. There were no blacks or Hispanics to speak of, and the only Italians were of the Northern third-generation variety, who were light complected and used red pepper, like we used basil and oregano. To my teachers, I spoke in tongues. They were ever vigilant to ferret out my method of cheating on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Not one teacher lifted a finger, or said one word to protect me when the boys repeatedly chanted, “When Dago flat, Dago, WOP, WOP, WOP!”

My dad reacted to my expressions of abject fear by telling me a story about how he had to fight five boys, one after the other, to earn the love of his mother…and a pair of roller skates. He was a Golden Gloves, Navy WWII hero, who, even before the war, had been shot, stabbed twice, and nearly lynched (Hey dat’s Frankie! He ain’t da guy! Take offadda rope!). He seemed nonplussed when I told him that I was so outweighed, that any pale-faced boy who had the notion could just sit on me and had indeed sat on me, and taunted me from atop and punched me and poked me with fingers and knuckles and pencils, and all I could do was cry or run. To dear old Dad, my only option was to stand and fight.

Not wanting to disappoint my dad, the hero,…I ran, (of course I ran! What am I, an idiot?) I got up an hour early, every morning and walked miles to school or to another bus stop, where “stomp the Guinea” was not the pre-boarding sport. I did this for years until the thugs, otherwise known as our neighbors, ran out of racial epithets. Besides, eventually I developed such speed and endurance that no one could catch me. They were huge, but tired easily. And you would be surprised how a little terror can give you that extra boost, until you can get in the door.

Eventually, the college vocabulary that drew so much suspicion at seven, became a hit at twelve. I began to be called “the brain” and with that small wedge, I managed to ingratiate myself into pale-faced society. I guess I was regarded as kind of like a mascot, or a novelty of sorts. It was years before I met an actual Hispanic and many more until I shook hands with a black man. For those years, I felt like the black man in the room.

To those other more legitimate minorities, I may seem to have been just another white boy. But I knew better. Even when my college application classified me as Caucasian, I knew better. I had been to the mountain, and I had seen the glory, and nobody could take that away from me. And even when the same boys who used to call me names and sit on me and torture me became my friends, I never forgot. You can never forget something like that. Ever.

I saw a story this morning about a grade school teacher, who decided to call the cops on one of her seven-year-old students, for allegedly uttering threatening words to other students. That she chose to seek a sheriff’s restraining order before going to the principal, or to the school counselor, or even to the parents of the student, I find interesting. Yet, each time I hear about another case of bullying, and the reaction thereto, I think about my own experience. And I’ll bet you think about yours. And maybe, after hearing about mine and thinking about yours, we can both think more about common sense and compassion, and less about fear and overreaction. There has got to be a better way.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo