longer.
So by now you should be ready to do something!
Yes, itâs going to take the right attitude on the part of the boss, the teacher, the parent, the principal, or whoever is responsible for the school or work environment. They have to care. They have to be approachable. But you may have to take the first step, at least be ready to respond when you see an opportunity to bring the abuse to the attention of the proper authorities.
For example . . .
It occurred to me the other day that most gym teachers are athletes or former athletes. They were athletes in high school and in college, they naturally hang around other athletes, and now theyâre at the center of the athletic program at the school. Consequently, some of these men and women havenât a clue what itâs like to be a nonathlete, and their physical education program reflects that: The winners get the points, and the losers fall through the cracks; the athletes enjoy the game, and the nonathletes just want to get out of there.
Despite my small stature as a boy, I always enjoyed physical activity and physical challenges. To this day, I exercise, I work out, I enjoy physical labor, and I relish a brisk walk on the logging trails that run through the mountains around our home. I run around and enjoy life outdoors as much as anybody. Iâm just not an athlete. I happen to think that tending a garden for all to enjoy, fixing a machine that performs useful labor, and writing books that minister to millions carry more importance for me than putting on little shorts and passing a bouncing, spherical object through a metal hoop more often than the other guy.
For a nonathletic kid, who is already at the bottom of the food chain at most schools, a big, muscular, gruff-voiced, suck-it-up gym teacher with a tight T-shirt and a whistle around his thick neck is the last person on earth heâs going to approach about a bullying problem. At the same time, does the gym teacher really know how it feels to be in a world where he has never, and will never, really fit? How are the two going to relate?
I guess thatâs why I never expected much compassion or mercy from my gym teachers. Most of my P.E. teachers didnât seem to care how I felt; they just yelled at me and blew their whistles. But all that changed when one man, a gym teacher, took the timeâa brief moment, actuallyâto care.
Bullying is a remarkable phenomenon, the way it follows you. In junior high school, I attracted specific people who became my self-appointed tormentors, and that went on for the full three years. When I started high school, I was with a whole new crowd of classmates, and yet the bullying picked up right where it left off. It didnât miss a beat. Youâd think the junior-high bullies had held a tie-in meeting with the high-school bullies: âOkay, be looking for Peretti. This is what weâve done to him so far . . .â
Remember the young boy in chapter 1 ? That kind of stuff happened to me all through junior high and all through my sophomore year in high school until suddenly, even astonishingly, everything changed. I donât remember the exact times and dates, but I do remember the chain of events. It started one day when I was running an errand for my mom.
The Graham Street Grocery was a little neighborhood grocery store less than a block from our house. We had an account there, and Mom often sent me to pick up small items: a loaf of bread, milk, ice cream, whatever. A young man from my high school got an after-school job there, and though Iâd never done him wrong and he hardly knew me, he became my enemy. I guess, to him, it was the cool thing to do.
On this particular day, I was minding my own business, just going up and down those short little aisles and picking up items on my grocery list, when my nemesis met me toward the back of the store, out of his bossâs earshot.
âWhatcha doinâ, Peretti?â
âOh, just
So by now you should be ready to do something!
Yes, itâs going to take the right attitude on the part of the boss, the teacher, the parent, the principal, or whoever is responsible for the school or work environment. They have to care. They have to be approachable. But you may have to take the first step, at least be ready to respond when you see an opportunity to bring the abuse to the attention of the proper authorities.
For example . . .
It occurred to me the other day that most gym teachers are athletes or former athletes. They were athletes in high school and in college, they naturally hang around other athletes, and now theyâre at the center of the athletic program at the school. Consequently, some of these men and women havenât a clue what itâs like to be a nonathlete, and their physical education program reflects that: The winners get the points, and the losers fall through the cracks; the athletes enjoy the game, and the nonathletes just want to get out of there.
Despite my small stature as a boy, I always enjoyed physical activity and physical challenges. To this day, I exercise, I work out, I enjoy physical labor, and I relish a brisk walk on the logging trails that run through the mountains around our home. I run around and enjoy life outdoors as much as anybody. Iâm just not an athlete. I happen to think that tending a garden for all to enjoy, fixing a machine that performs useful labor, and writing books that minister to millions carry more importance for me than putting on little shorts and passing a bouncing, spherical object through a metal hoop more often than the other guy.
For a nonathletic kid, who is already at the bottom of the food chain at most schools, a big, muscular, gruff-voiced, suck-it-up gym teacher with a tight T-shirt and a whistle around his thick neck is the last person on earth heâs going to approach about a bullying problem. At the same time, does the gym teacher really know how it feels to be in a world where he has never, and will never, really fit? How are the two going to relate?
I guess thatâs why I never expected much compassion or mercy from my gym teachers. Most of my P.E. teachers didnât seem to care how I felt; they just yelled at me and blew their whistles. But all that changed when one man, a gym teacher, took the timeâa brief moment, actuallyâto care.
Bullying is a remarkable phenomenon, the way it follows you. In junior high school, I attracted specific people who became my self-appointed tormentors, and that went on for the full three years. When I started high school, I was with a whole new crowd of classmates, and yet the bullying picked up right where it left off. It didnât miss a beat. Youâd think the junior-high bullies had held a tie-in meeting with the high-school bullies: âOkay, be looking for Peretti. This is what weâve done to him so far . . .â
Remember the young boy in chapter 1 ? That kind of stuff happened to me all through junior high and all through my sophomore year in high school until suddenly, even astonishingly, everything changed. I donât remember the exact times and dates, but I do remember the chain of events. It started one day when I was running an errand for my mom.
The Graham Street Grocery was a little neighborhood grocery store less than a block from our house. We had an account there, and Mom often sent me to pick up small items: a loaf of bread, milk, ice cream, whatever. A young man from my high school got an after-school job there, and though Iâd never done him wrong and he hardly knew me, he became my enemy. I guess, to him, it was the cool thing to do.
On this particular day, I was minding my own business, just going up and down those short little aisles and picking up items on my grocery list, when my nemesis met me toward the back of the store, out of his bossâs earshot.
âWhatcha doinâ, Peretti?â
âOh, just
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