To be or not to be a .... bully??

As I am sitting here tonight I am amazed at the things I am hearing. My niece, Kelly, has just told my brother and sister the truth of a fight that she was involved in on Friday. This past weekend was her weekend to be with her mother, further known as WD (Womb donor), so they just found out about it tonight. I am not amazed because she was involved in a fight, the fact that she lied, or even the fact that WD did not find it necessary to let anyone know until tonight when J went to pick her up. What I am amazed at is the fact that Kelly picked on this little girl in her class until that little girl pushed her down and shoved grass into her mouth. While this is something all children go through at one point or another in their lives, it just really disappoints me that it was my little Kelly. She, herself, was picked on so badly last year that she came home in tears almost everyday for a week because she was not wearing name brand shoes. She cried and begged J and C to help her in some sort of way, to make this boy stop picking on her. Now, almost a year later she was the one doing the bullying. It makes me sad that the lesson and pain of what she went through didn't stick with her.

J and C try to explain and get the point across that it's not nice or right to pick on anyone. That you don't know what kind of problems or pain it could cause for them, whether it be now or in the future. Hearing that really made me think of my childhood and how much I was picked on for being overweight, not wearing the right kind of clothes, or not living in the right city. I wanted her to understand what J and C were telling her, so I asked if I could tell the story, hoping that maybe it would help her get the point they were trying to make, also that it would make her understand that as little as something may seem to you it could mean so much more to someone else.

The story I told Kelly was one of where I was in the sixth grade. I was basically the new girl in a new middle school, from a neighboring town that was not thought of all that highly by this school. As I said before I was always overweight and it was a constant joke to some. At the time, my favorite color was purple and I had a all purple outfit that I loved to wear. Hell, I even had purple Keds to match, I thought it was awesome. One day as I was coming out of literature class I heard a chorus of three to four girls singing "How now purple cow! You're so fat, you are a cow! How now purple cow!" To this day, I will not wear purple. I hate just about anything having to do with the color purple. How silly is that? At twenty-eight years old, I still refuse to have anything to do with a color, no less, because of something mean that was said to me in the sixth grade! Yet, at the same time, I know that it really did affect me more than I understand. I associate the color purple with mean, being over weight, and a childhood that I want to run away from. If only I could save her from the pain that could be caused by her getting picked on and the trouble that it will cause when she gets in trouble or possibly loses friends for being the bully herself. Then again, we all have to learn our lessons ourselves in one way or another. I just truly hopes she understands that this could have been a whole lot worse, especially if she was the one getting picked on.