My Experience with Bullying

When I was ten years old and in 4th grade I had big front teeth. I was a small kid with big front teeth and I mostly kept to myself, usually reading way beyond my grade level at the playground. That's not to say I was smart, I was just anticipating the release of The Last of the Mohicans in the theater, and my dad told me I had to read the book before I could see the movie. It was my stature, my reading preferences, and my unusually large tusks that made me a target for some bigger. perhaps meaner kids.

One day on the playground, my foes ripped the four hundred page book from my hands and pulled its pages from the binding, scattering them across the kickball field and pounding them into the dirt with the soles of their shoes. Just days before my dad and I bonded as he took me to Walden Books in the Camillus Mall to purchase the book (at least that's the way I remember it).

I cried while hunkered in some private part of playground equipment. It rained. The pages turned to mush. I remember having no advocate at the school. No one who stood up for me. But when I returned home with an empty backpack my dad drove me back to the school. We toured the kickball field as though it were Gettysburg. I scrambled to collect the relics of the event in vain. My dad took what pieces of the book we could find and marched into the principle's office while holding my hand. He slammed the papers down on the principle's desk and exclaimed, "What are you going to do to make this right?"

It had nothing to do with the loss of a five-dollar book, but the loss of innocence and the pain that his son was experiencing. I'm sure nothing was ever done to make it right, as the two or three oversized bullies went on to write a jingle about me and my teeth. They would corner me in the most dimly lit parts of the hallway and bellow it out until I trembled. Believe it or not, two of them sang the same song some six years after high school graduation outside of a tavern one cold winter night.

I forgive my childhood oppressors even though they've never asked for it. I forgive them because I'm sure they've moved on, made their own families and realize their mistake. But I also want to say THANK YOU, because without you I might not have written Muffin Cat.

Muffin Cat is against bullying and stands for kindness to all. He invites people who are sitting alone to sit beside him. He picks up the pieces of scattered books. He holds hands and demands answers. He wipes away tears. Sometimes he's tough and decisive, but most of the time he's tender hearted and understanding. The power of Muffin Cat lives within us all. It's a power to love and to forgive.