Everyone has a bully story from childhood

By Karen McNew
WSLS10 Anchor
Published: October 30, 2008

I was working in the yard before work today… planting pansies around our mailbox… last weekend I created a flowerbed at the end of the driveway and planted tulip bulbs so today was the finishing touches with pansies and mulch…

As I planted the flowers I started wondering why people use the word pansy in a derogatory way to describe a weaker individual… pansies are some of the strongest flowers around… I mean they bloom in the snow for goodness sake! 

As that random thought crossed my mind so did an incident on the bus when I was in middle school… I truly despised middle school for many reasons and would not return to that moment in my life if given the chance… it is an awkward time for all of us… bad hair… braces… “baby fat”... extra large band instrument to take home on the bus (I played the sax for one year and one year only)

Old school Cosby Show fans will understand this one more than others…

On the bus ride home each day there was a boy (I can still remember his name) who was always flirting with two of my “friends”  I use quotation marks because in middle school it is hard to tell if you really have any friends from time to time… anyway.. Cosby was popular and Theo and Cockroach referred to girls in fast food terms… ie… if a girl was hot she was a “whopper” or a “big mac”... so this boy kept on and on about how my friends were the biggest value meals ever… and I just tried to keep to myself (what I spent a lot of 6th grade doing)... then just to be mean spirited he looks at me and says and “You know what you are?“  I thought… oh no… I don’t want to be a junior cheeseburger.. or whatever… compared to my friends…  I said “What?“  He said, “You are the crumb of a chicken McNugget…“  everyone who could hear laughed but me… I tried to laugh and act like it was no big deal because in the big picture of life it is no big deal… but when you are young and just want to be liked it really stinks to have to ride the bus the rest of the way home after a comment like that…

Fortunately, I have been blessed with a great Mom who is always there for me and always helping me to understand the bumps that are presented from time to time in the road of life… she always made me feel better just by telling me that she thought I was great and that the only thing to do in that situation is “kill them with kindness”  that is a hard lesson that I am still learning now in my 30s… feel free to share you bully stories with me… and if you have a child going through a tough time at school… tell him or her I said to hang in there… middle school doesn’t last forever…