Or The First Time I Learned How Fear Works
Ed. note: This memory came back to me in the middle of the night, and it felt connected to the way fear shapes people and systems right now. It’s just a moment from childhood that suddenly made a lot more sense as an adult.
Every morning I rode the same bus to school, and every morning we had to deal with the bully. He was bigger than all of us and always picked up last, which gave him time to make an entrance. He’d walk down the aisle like he owned it and stop beside whatever seat he wanted. Whoever sat there moved without argument. His little crew followed him, picking at the smaller kids and plucking at us as we got off the bus. He always got the last word, and yeah, we were scared of him.
One morning, as he hovered over another kid waiting to take his seat, something in me snapped. I stood up, looked straight at his chin, and told him to knock it off and go sit somewhere else. I was tiny, but I had an outsized sense of justice. So I said it.
A hush rolled through the bus. Then he punched me in the nose so fast I never saw his arm move. My eyes filled, and I sat back down as quickly as I’d stood. The other kids laughed while I pressed my forehead to the seat in front of me and sobbed quietly all the way to school.
I was new that year and still learning how things worked. Not long after, I met another kid in class. We argued during math, harmless stuff. One day during group work he messed with my pencil to get a rise out of me. I said something, he stood up, and something dumb and automatic inside me took over. I stood up too and punched him in the nose. He sat down. I sat down. No one said anything.
After class a few kids laughed with me about it. For the first time, I belonged.
Later that kid told me about the bully. There was a group of boys who had promised to jump into any fight if one of them got into trouble. The bully was part of it, and the whole thing was run by an even bigger kid in a higher grade. My classmate wanted in. That explained the pencil and the pushing and the nose.
A little later in gym class, a crowd formed around that same kid and the biggest girl in our grade. They circled each other until she finally landed a few hard punches. It only lasted a minute, but it felt much longer. She drifted near me, and before I really understood what I was doing, I threw a punch that caught her in the eye. He used the opening to hit her a few more times until she fell crying. The teachers rushed in, grabbed us, and marched us to the principal’s office.
When the principal asked why I hit her, I said she was beating up my friend. That wasn’t true, we weren’t really “friends” but it was the story I stuck with. My parents were called, and nothing else came of it.
After that, he and I were invited into the group. Suddenly no one could touch us. There were five or six of us, and if one fought, everyone fought. It was little kid stuff, but at that age it felt like power.
This went on for a few months. During that time, I became known in the neighborhood for stickball. I was fast and usually first picked. I was close with a couple of kids. One day the bully told one of them to fight me because he thought it would be funny. I was talking to another friend when my friend hit me in the jaw hard enough to put me on the ground. My little sister ran over and I told her to go away because I was ashamed. We fought a bit, no real winner, and that was the end of our friendship.
A few days later, the bully’s bully showed up at our stickball game. At some point he told me to fight another friend, the kind kid who had me over for dinner, whose sister I had a crush on. I knew it was wrong. I also knew that if I refused, the bully’s bully would beat me up in front of everyone. So I walked up to my friend and punched him. We brawled. I beat him badly and felt rotten the entire time.
That night I sat through dinner bruised and scraped, then went to my room and sobbed. Eventually I called him to apologize, still crying. He did not forgive me. I was never invited back to play stickball.
After that I pulled inward. I stopped fighting and avoided everyone. I got rides to school or walked alone. The kids who had been my “friends” now threatened me or ignored me because the bullies had decided I was out.
Eventually my dad retired from the military and we moved back to the States. My life reset. I made better friends. Still, I never forgot that the bullies never paid any price for what they did. Fear protected them and bent the rest of us into shapes we never meant to take.
I still see versions of that as an adult. The bully grows up and becomes part of the system, and people either freeze or go along because it feels safer. This memory came back to me last night, and it felt connected to the way fear shapes people and systems today. I wrote it down because I think more of us understand this dynamic than we let on.
And maybe I needed to finally own up to it so I could let it go.
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