I’m not much of an avid Facebook user. I login maybe once a month to check on extended family, then log right out. Last night, while chatting with some friends online, I made a quick check and there I saw Paul’s face followed by platitudes and pictures of raised glasses.
My childhood bully was dead.
The post was a hammer blow of sorts. There was shock mixed with sadness. He was fifty years old, relatively young in the grand scheme of things. There was no cause of death listed. One moment here. One moment gone.
I don’t know how I feel. There was no joy in his passing. There was emptiness. There was a little sadness mixed with a little regret. Mostly, there was nothing. That somehow feels worst of all
Meet Paul
Paul wasn’t the first bully in my life, and he wasn’t the last. Yet, he earned a place of honor in the ranks of them.
I first met Paul in seventh grade. Paul was big for his age. He was loomed over the kids and while he wasn’t strong, he was slightly overweight. He used his bulk to his advantage. He could toss insults and then back them up with good old-fashioned intimidation.
Paul also had purple spots around his mouth and chin. It looked to be a birthmark. I think this made him a target for bullies when he was younger so when he got bigger, he decided to pay it back.
I was perfect for the job. I was a string bean of a kid with greasy hair and a big imagination. I was weird. I didn’t fit in. I wrote weird stories and drew my own comic books. I was everything he needed.
Years of torment
Seventh grade was the worst year of my life. My family was going through some hard times. My older sister had moved to Europe for a year. My relatives were dying or very sick. My family was falling apart. There was no support for me. I felt entirely on my own.
My grades were a dumpster fire. I was put in the lowest level classes and there I met Paul. He’d always smile and then make fun of me to the whole class to everyone’s delight. Things really boiled over during an English class. The teacher read a story about a diner that was described as a “greasy spoon”. Paul thought it was hilarious. From that day onward, he called me greasy spoon.
He called me it in the hallways. He called me in the classroom. He never stopped nor was he asked to stop by any teacher. At one point, I grew so desperate that I let him borrow one of my Ninetendo games. When I asked for it back, he told me that he had given it to someone else. “Har har, greasy spoon. Serves you right.”
By eighth grade, I started washing my hair and keeping it cut short. I started wearing “acceptable” clothes. I stopped drawing. I stopped writing. I stopped being “weird”. I did everything to hide my “imperfections”, yet no matter how I looked, he still called me “greasy spoon”.
Relief did come. I graduated from middle school. I never saw him again. Until this year. Until Facebook. But I never really looked at him until I read his obituary.
The end of the road
Paul reached out to me earlier this year by way of a Facebook friend request. I accepted without comment. I don’t know why he reached out. I don’t why I accepted. Maybe there was a longing in either of us to repair a long ruined bridge. Maybe there was curiosity.
It was a risk for me to accept the friend request. There was nothing he could say to hurt me except everything. But I didn’t write to him. I just let still waters be.
That’s how it ended. My last interaction with Paul was reading about his passing on Facebook. I don’t know how he died, but reading the resulting replies, it sounds like he was loved. It sounds like the bully left him. I don’t know. I never knew the man, only the monster.
While Paul was in the wrong, I also blame all the teachers and parents who supported bullying. I blame all the adults who looked the other way in both of our lives. I blame the people who enabled him. I blame the school who didn’t seem to care. I blame them all who created a system where cruelty was allowed to go unchecked. Yet, there is no anger in my blame. Just sadness and loss.
That said, I hope Paul found peace and comfort in the end. I hope his family and friends find peace in their grief. And if that childhood bully didn’t leave him, I hope those he may have targeted feel the same relief that I felt when I left middle school never to see Paul again.
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