I’ve been bullied a certain amount in my life. My mother was a bully, and my parents also unintentionally taught me to accommodate bullies and try to please them. Once I learned to stand up for myself, I’ve had an immediate sensitivity, maybe an oversensitivity, to being bullied.
A quick note after that introduction: my only Republican reader (to my knowledge; I don’t know but I tend not to attract them) said that I was always commenting on Republicans in sly and nasty ways. He said it had gotten to the point that I was “like the glassmaker who has to incorporate a flaw into every bottle to prove it’s handmade.” Pretty good simile, for a Republican. (Geez, I did it again.) Was I just bullying Republicans in return?
I felt a little chastened and told him I’d take my foot off of the pedal. Except as I think about it, if I eliminate bullying Republicans from this blog, I’m losing half of my content. Haha. Sorry, man.
In truth, I set myself up to be disliked and bullied. My mother, having had enough of kids, kicked me out of the house a year early for first grade. Thus I was always smaller than the other kids. In a few years, that would be acutely noticeable. Also I’ve also been kind of little—small-framed and not tall, 5’10” at my largest. With my back compressing, I’m down to 5’7” at most and possibly 5’6”. It’s a good thing that the elderly aren’t much into bullying.
As far as I know, my elementary school was fairly tame. We lived in Morgantown, WV, a university town, and a number of students were children of my father’s colleagues. As he was a professor of education, too, perhaps people knew the name. In any event, I don’t recall any fights in the schoolyard, so I never learned anything about how to fight. Dad didn’t teach me; it wouldn’t have been in his nature. It’s crucial, though, that Mom was very critical of everyone and most things. That’s the kind of combat I learned.
Moving to Ft. Lauderdale coincidentally in time for seventh grade introduced me to a whole new set of demographics: Jewish kids from Hollywood, tough street kids from downtown Ft. Lauderdale, and privileged kids from the wincingly-named Plantation, in western Lauderdale. It made for a weird mix, with which none of the components I had any experience.
At age 11, I was short, chubby, unaware of the urban habits of Ft. Lauderdale, and utterly naïve. It was a fatal combination. Add one more facet: somehow, I was supremely assured and positive that everyone wanted my opinion on whatever was going on in class, and, given that I learned how to give opinions from my mother, this was a Bad Thing.
I’m sure that my more astute classmates sat back when I spoke, arms crossed, thinking, “Who the fuck is THIS guy?” And their next thought was, “We’re going to have to GET him.”
When I wasn’t watching, people hawked phlegm onto my hot dogs. I was invited to perform oral sex on a dead ursine. There must have been much more; I was probably unaware of it happening, as innocent as I was.
I ventured out to watch a junior high football game and fell for the oldest trick in the book. I was standing on the sidelines, as one was allowed to do, and suddenly an upperclassman held out the yard marker to me and said, “Here, hold this for a minute.”
I obliged and of course I never saw him again. I knew the rules of football, but somehow I messed up and moved the chain before it was ready. Of course, the person at the other end of the chain had to as well, but no blame was assigned (note passive voice) to that miscreant.
Without being angry, the officials soon sorted it out, but some big guy intoned, “Typical seventh year trick.” I wish that there was some way to let him know that the moment is still seared into my memory, nearly 60 years later.
Finally in ninth grade I found my people, and life was easier, even fun. A couple of them have reappeared 55 years later. But I wasn’t done being bullied.
In my senior year, I made the varsity baseball team as a pitcher. During a scrimmage one day, the shortstop, Tony Giammaresi, who was good enough somehow to be drafted by the Cleveland (then) Indians, yelled, “Come on, Jarecke, throw strikes.” I’ll note for the record that my control was always excellent and he was probably complaining about an aberrant few pitches.
I ignored him, but lately what I wish I’d have done is walked to the back of the mound, taken my glove off, rubbed up the ball, and stared at him blankly. I wonder if, like all bullies, he would have backed down or only increased his abuse, to which, if I’d had any nerve, I should have continued staring at him and shaken my head. Then maybe hold out the ball: here, if you’re so good at it.
I was speaking with my high school friend Jeff one day recently and mentioned that I had this memory of Tony walking around with two black eyes. Had someone clocked him? Yes, Jeff reported; some guy, like everyone else in Tony’s path, had had it and walked up to him, held out his left hand and said, look at this, and when Tony looked down, this guy punched him in the nose. Cowardly, sure, but the bully got bullied.
Later, as my dad predicted about people like Tony, he got his. He joined a low Indians farm club, and, as I found in decades-old records, hit barely badly and fielded much worse. He was cut from the lowest level of minor league ball and sent home. I have seen an interview or two with him over the years, however, and he still is roostering his way around. He’s claimed, in fact, that he pitched at a professional level. In an all-star tournament, even I hit a double off of him.
I wasn’t bullied in college; the frat boys considered me beneath them, and the rednecks didn’t know what to make of me. My MFA program was good but not the highest level, and I don’t know that any bullying goes on at them; what I’ve heard about Iowa is that they all slap each other on the back instead. No, instead it’s a more subtle kind of ego jousting, if that occurs at all. Not even that at UNC-Greensboro.
As an instructor at Auburn, I was among the instructors who were all too much in the sewer to be messed with; the senior faculty, if anything, took pity on us. They didn’t even bother to condescend--which is really a subtle form of bullying: you're not worth the candle.
Law school at UNC was either a continuation of college fraternities or a confused mix of kids from northern schools who couldn’t get into the Ivies, or people like me: maybe older, with different careers or even families. I did feel excluded by the southern frat boys, but, by then, who cared? I was too busy trying to get grades good enough to get an offer from a firm.
No one really bullies anyone in private practice except for really awful partners of whom I’ve only heard tell. The people I knew were either gentle, kind, funny, and helpful, or too near the grave to care.
The bullying picked up at AIG. The business people, the folks trying to design and market and sell products, were under immense pressure at the risk of their jobs to be make a whole lot of money. In many profit centers, the law was an obstacle meant to be ignored, as it had been for decades, or somehow gotten around.
As I wrote many posts ago, I told a profit center head that he simply wasn’t allowed to kick back premium to a policyholder, that it was against the law, and if he really intended to do it, I would have to tell the president.
“You fucking do what you have to do, and I’ll fucking do what I have to do,” he told me, hung up, and called my boss, who was on the phone with him when I rushed down there.
On hanging up, my boss said, “He don’t want to work with you no more.” Firing your lawyer is an extreme form of bullying, the worse I’ve experienced. I nearly died from a heart attack working there. Who knows, maybe my left descending artery had been building up for years. All it took was a shove from the panicked business people at AIG to stop it completely.
Moving to Seattle from AIG, I negotiated software-related agreements with, I’ll be honest, really high class people at major firms. They are all too self-assured to bother bullying people; it’s easier on everyone if they are simply kind and courteous.
As an old man, bullying is never part of my day. I guess we’ve all run out of testosterone, which, if you look around at the world, is the problem in the first place. It’s too bad there isn’t an antidote. In any event, it sure is nice not to deal with egotistical old white guys anymore. Peace is peaceful.
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