A Story of Bullies Punished

A Story of Bullies Punished
submitted by Michael D & filed under Bullied In The Past
posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2012

This is a true story with only the names changed to protect my identity. I entered 8th grade in the fall of 1969. Eighth graders were thrown in with grades 9 through 12 in my high school. I lived in a Southern town outside of Atlanta where Friday night football reigned supreme.

Everyone was required to take Physical Education (P.E.) in 8th and 9th grades. Jocks and the academically less inclined frequently opted to take P.E. past the two required years as an easy elective. Grades 8 through 12 were mixed together in P.E. classes. There would be approximately 60 boys in one P.E. class, which would be divided into two sections, each with a football coach as teacher. We would change in a large locker room and then wait for the coaches to show up. They would show up occasionally, take roll, and maybe make us run laps. The coaches normally came very late to class, if they came at all. The older students would spend the period bullying the younger ones.

My 5th period P.E. class met every day after lunch. It had a group of juniors who played varsity football. They would come into the locker room, select a non-athletic 8th grader at random, and drag him down to the varsity football locker room at the end of the hall. I do not know for sure what went on down there, but there were be screaming and sometimes crying followed by the naked victim running down the hall to the showers. His belly would be bright red, a so called “cherry belly” or “slap belly” caused by slapping. His buttocks would bear the bright red marks of a belt. His testicles would be covered in a heating gel used by athletes to treat sore muscles. The victim would be running to the shower or sink to wash off the gel which burned intensely on sensitive skin.

The bullies love those who resisted, and they delighted most in the ones who cried. I remember one boy I will call “Billy.” He was mentally and physically disabled. Today I think he would probably be excused from a P.E. class, but this was a less enlightened era in a very backwards, rural part of the USA. Billy was short, weak, and skinny. He was in remedial courses and struggled academically. His family was poor, and he wore outdated, threadbare, ill-fitting clothes. He would begin crying when the bullies showed up to select their victim. He was bullied throughout the school day, but he suffered the most in that P.E. class.

Even though I was not an athlete, I was protected because the quarterback (QB) of the football team lived in my neighborhood, and his parents knew mine. When the bullies came for me a couple of times, the QB said, “Not him.” Even though the QB was not involved in the hazing, he had veto power over the selection of victims.

Despite my protected status, I dreaded P.E. I was bullied some, but I was spared the worst treatment. No one dared tell. The coaches did not care. I suspect they even knew about it. The football coaches and players were demigods in the town. I knew that no one would do anything, and terrible retribution would fall upon anyone who dared to tell. My older brother told me that this group of junior football players had been doing this form of hazing since their freshman year.

One day in English class, a student said something very negative about the Vice Principal (VP) who was in charge of discipline. The teacher spoke up in the VP’s defense and said something about how fair and honorable a man the VP was. I did not know the VP, but I greatly respected this teacher. I went home that afternoon and called the school office. I asked to speak to the VP. I told him what was happening in the P.E. class. He told me he would look into it the first thing in the morning. He then said, “I will need to know your name. I promise you that I will never reveal your identity to anyone, not even the coaches. I will just say that there have been several complaints.” I told him my name.

After I hung up, it occurred to me that I should give him names. I called him back, and named the eight students who had done the bullying and about seventeen students who had been bullied. He was writing down the names of the students. He would ask me to repeat or spell names. He had been very calm, professional, and matter-of-fact over the phone. His demeanor inspired my confidence in him. When I mentioned the name of Billy, he gasped. I then paused to describe in vivid detail Billy’s weeping and the bullies’ mockery of his pain and suffering. As I gave the rest of the list, there was a stunned silence on the other end of the line. When I finished, he said, “I will discuss this with the principal at once, and I will call in the coaches this afternoon after practice.” He then reassured me once again that he would never reveal my identity.

When I went to P.E. the next day, the bullies were running around frantically telling those who had been bullied that they were not to reveal what had happened to them. They said, “If you think what happened before was bad, what will happen to you for talking will be far worse.” The bullies were trying to concoct a story about how they were only playing around and no one had been hurt. One of them suggested that they say they had only tickled the underclassmen.

I think the bullies had been alerted to the investigation because two of the bullies – the first two on my list – had been called out at the end of lunch period. One by one, the bullies were called out of the P.E. locker room. An office aid would come to the door of the boys’ locker hall and call out a name. Five minutes later the process would be repeated. Once a bully left, he did not return. They were called out in the exact order I had listed them. I do not know who was questioning them, what they were being asked, or what they were saying. I do not know if any of those on my listed of bullied had been questioned. I tried to keep a low profile. Because I had not been bullied, I was not suspected as the source.

The next day, the coaches came to P.E. class on time. I suspect that the coaches had gotten into big trouble. The class was divided into teams to play flag football, except for the bullies. The bullies were forced to do pushups, sit-ups, wind sprints, and banks (sprinting up a very steep hill) over and over for the entire P.E. period. Then they had to report to football practice after school. I heard they had to do additional exercises after football practice. This went on for a week. They were miserable. I could tell they were very unhappy.

Each day as the bullies were being punished, the VP stood on the top of the hill overlooking the athletic field. I vividly remember him in his tie and dress shirt, wearing sunglasses, his arms crossed across his chest or resting on his hips, stains under his arms from the September heat in the Deep South. To me, he personified justice. Someone in my P.E. class asked, “Why is the VP there?” Someone else answered, “To make sure the coaches don’t go easy.”

The bullies swore that they would find out who had reported them. They said that they would take him to a remote cabin and torture him to death over the course of days. The body would never be found, or if was found, it would be too mutilated to be identified. For these reasons, I waited twenty years before I told my story to anyone. The hazing that had gone on for over two years ended the day that I made those phone calls. Bullying continued, but not on the same organized and extreme scale.

The VP died a few years later. Many came forward to say what a brave and honorable man he was. I wish I had been able to tell my story then.

Today I do not fear or hate those particular bullies. I do despise all bullies I meet in my life, and I hope I will always have the courage of the VP. Bullies do not have the power over my life they way the did at one time.

I will, however, always be haunted by the memory of Billy. I clearly remember his weeping and pleas for mercy being met with mockery and derision. If a society is judged by the treatment of its weakest members, then that was one sick society.

I tried to track down Billy years later. He had fallen off the grid if he was ever on it. I pray that, wherever he may be, his blessings in his later years were great enough to compensate somewhat for the terrible suffering he endured in high school. If he no longer walks the face of the earth – and I suspect this is so because he was so very weak and sickly – may he find in the next life the mercy that was denied to him in this one.