Riding the Bus

The earliest memory of major bullying that I remember happened while I was riding the school bus home. I was in the 3rd grade and attended the local elementary school. I had been receptive to bullying in the form of name calling prior to this incident, however, this was the first time anyone had ever gotten physical with me and I with them. Back in the early 90's the bus was sectioned off into particular spots for particular groups of kids. The back of the bus when I was in school was considered where the "cool and popular" kids sat. If anyone who was not popular or cool sat in the back of the bus, they were told to move and if they refused, then the kids would pick on and beat up the kids who refused to move out of the seats. Riding the bus was terrifying for me for the most part because I was always picked on by both girls and boys. Throughout my years of being bullied, girls bullied me more, but on this particular day, there was a boy who had been picking on me for quite a while. This boy was a year or two older than I was and I will call him Tommy for identity purposes...

Tommy was one of the more popular or cool kids and he enjoyed picking on kids like me who were not popular and kind of kept to ourselves. Tommy had been saying things to me for quite some time but I had ignored him for the most part. I was taught to ignore people who were mean and not react to them as that's what they look for is a reaction to what they are saying or doing. Over the course of about two weeks that I can clearly recall even today, Tommy would call me names, make fun of how I dressed, what kind of backpack I had and anything of the sort. After those two weeks, I was so sick and tired of hearing the degrading things from Tommy that I finally lost it with him. We were about ten minutes into our bus ride home (which was a total of about 20 mins between all the stops), and Tommy was saying mean things about me and my family. He didn't know my family and just said things for the sake of saying them. I let him just run his mouth and I tried to ignore him until he started talking about my parents...He looked me straight in the eyes and told me that "Your parents don't love you because you are very ugly". He proceeded to tell me "Your mom must be ugly or was a whore and slept with a lot of different guys to make such an ugly baby"! At this point I was on the verge of tears but I was determined to not cry in front of him as that would show to him that he was right...I tried to get up and move to a different seat but Tommy stopped me as I stood up and he proceeded to take his backpack and hit me square in the mouth with his bag that was filled with hard cover text books. He broke one of my front teeth in half and I started to bleed as the chunk of tooth fell into my hand and I started feeling the nerve pain and instantly got a headache...At that moment, I lost my cool and had enough of his crap. Mind you that I am only in 3rd grade (8yrs old), so I looked at Tommy after the initial shock of losing my tooth and I clocked him with a closed fist right in the nose! He began to bleed and by this point there was a ton of commotion on the bus and the bus driver had to pull over and find out what happened. The driver wrote both of us up for fighting and said that our parents would be notified.

After I got off the bus at my bus stop, which Tommy's stop was 2 stops before mine, I ran the two blocks home and as I was crying I told my mom about what had happened and cried because my tooth hurt so bad and it needed to get fixed...About an hour after being home, we hear a knock on our door. It's Tommy's mom and she wants to speak with my mom and she is not in a good mood.

His mom was upset because Tommy came home with a broken nose! I did not know I hit him that hard, hard enough to break his nose until his mom had said so. His mom demanded that my parents pay for Tommy's broken nose to get fixed and all the doctor bills that came with it. My mom was so furious by this request after she and Tommy's mom discussed what happened on the bus (not in a friendly manner mind you) "If you want me to pay for Tommy's doctor bills for his nose that's fine, but then you have to pay for my daughter's dental bills to get her tooth fixed that your son broke"! Tommy's mom was completely appalled at this request and at my mom for suggesting it. Tommy's mom said that she refused to pay for my dental bill to fix my tooth. My mom responded by saying that if she refused to pay for my tooth then she refused to pay for Tommy's nose...In the end, my mom and Tommy's mom agreed to pay for their own kids' bills and that we are not to be near each other on the bus anymore...

Tommy, I feel learned an important lesson that in turn got us kicked off the bus I believe for 2 or 3 days...But Tommy learned to stop bullying me and to leave me alone completely if he wanted his nose to say intact. :)

...Now, I am not promoting fighting by any means but when you tell an adult as I did several times to the bus driver and he told me that he could not technically do anything until he saw Tommy doing something to me, I felt I had no choice but to take matters into my own hands...It should have never gotten to that point. We are supposed to feel safe and protected at school and on the bus...My experiences were never those of safety and protection but fear and tension.

Bullying can and does happen anywhere at any time even if an adult is monitoring children. Kids are sneaky and will find ways to do it and the threat of an adult potentially watching them does not do anything. I feel that each bus should have not only a driver but at least one bus monitor that can monitor what goes on while the students are on the bus. This will not eliminate bullying but it can cut down on how much and how often someone is bullied. But the most important thing to be learned from this experience is that if a child tells you something is being done to them or that something is wrong, PLEASE DO NOT take it lightly because by the time they are coming to you to make you aware of it, the bullying has gone on for awhile now and they do not know how to deal with it on their own without fighting back. PLEASE listen to the children and try to stop bullying before it gets to the physical level.

~Melissa