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By Patrick Cleary
Imagine that, when you go to the company cafeteria, nobody will sit with you. You try to find a table away from everyone, but everybody takes their lunch break at the same time. You bring a book or a magazine to read, but your co-workers throw things at you. They spit in your food when your back is turned, will smash your tray out of your hands as you walk from the cash register to your seat, or refuse to let you sit down at the one remaining space at their table. You spend the entire lunch hour standing in the middle of the room, holding a tray, searching for a place where you can simply eat in peace. Imagine going to the rest rooms in your company, only to be physically harassed by your co-workers. Trying to get to a stall, you're pushed against a wall. Someone from accounts payable grabs you by the face and repeatedly whacks your head against the hollow metal of the stall doors. A sales rep stands in front of the urinals and refuses to let you go to the bathroom, even though you've been holding it since you arrived that morning. Imagine walking by the restroom doors, slowing down to hear if anyone's in there, hoping that you can just go in and use the facilities without the chance of physical harm. Imagine sitting at your desk, trying to do your job, and random people in the building call your extension to taunt you. Every time you pick up the phone, someone calls you "faggot" or "asshole" or makes fun of your appearance. Imagine if, every time you have to make a presentation, one of your co-workers makes rude noises at the back of the conference room, and everyone laughs at you. Imagine that, at the end of the day, you have to dash through the parking lot to your car because someone in the public relations department thinks it's fun to push you to the ground. That, when he catches up with you, all your co-workers gather around in a circle and watch this happening. That you don't have a suit without holes in it from being ground into the pavement on a near-daily basis. That you frequently hide cuts and bruises from your roommates or spouse, because you can't face telling them that, once again, you've been assaulted at work. Imagine going to the Human Resources department with complaints about this treatment, and being told that there's not much they can do about it. That, if an HR representative steps in, you'll probably just get treated worse. That this is the way that people in office buildings act, and you should really try to stop bringing this upon yourself. Try to fit in. Try to become invisible. Try hitting back. Now imagine you have to stay in this office building, by law, for twelve years. That's what school is like for a lot of kids. Today, a child in a California high school opened fire on his fellow students. He woke up and made the decision to take a gun from his house and use it on his peers and authority figures.
When it's said like that, it seems innocuous. So innocent. Kids taunt. Kids tease. Kids are kids, and some are popular and some aren't. It's a toss-up, the luck of the draw. If you fit into a particular subset, if you're good-looking or athletic or funny or dangerous-looking enough, you're left alone or admired. If not (and the decision about such things is made at such an early age, it's almost arbitrary), you're shunned. You're deemed "not good enough" by your peers, and you become the object of ridicule, scorn, and violence. Mild violence, to be sure, but how many surreptitious punches, slaps, pinches, knock-downs, bloody noses, bruises, cuts and scrapes does it take to add up to taking that child's life? If they all occurred on the same day, during the same hour, they would kill the child. So too, if every insult, taunt, name-calling incident, shunning, derisive laugh, and tease were added up, it would be considered mental torture. If parents treated their children like that, they'd be labeled abusive and the child would be taken away. If it's from a peer group, it's considered "growing up." I don't condone what happened today. I don't think that any child in his right mind would do such a thing, but some things always seem the same about these incidents. The children in question always seem to be the "outsiders," they always seem to be "unpopular" and not understood by their classmates. They seem to have concocted elaborate plots to put their fellow students in their place, by way of extreme violence. They often tell friends and family members what they want to do.
But mostly, what I remember is leaving the house every morning, feeling my soul drop out of the pit of my stomach as I wondered what I'd have to put up with that day. Coming home at the end of the afternoon, shaking and queasy and wishing that I never had to set foot in that place again. Thinking of the faces of every person in that school, and wishing there were some way I could get back at them. Wishing that I could make them feel as bad as they made me feel. Wishing that there was something I could do to just make it stop. Did I ever fantasize about hurting them? Yeah, I did. Not as much as the students who bring guns to school, but I did. If last today's news were about a small, unpopular freshman in a California school who took out a gun and shot himself in the middle of the boys' room, we might be considering not only his actions, but the actions of those around him. He's a villain. I don't want to make it seem like I'm saying anything but. There is nothing to be said in his defense. Killing is evil. Guns are evil, and the fact that a troubled child who'd made his revenge fantasies known had access to guns is incomprehensible to me. But nothing happens in a vacuum. Looking at the actions without taking the environment into account is just as big a mistake as not listening to a child when he says that he wants to hurt, to maim, to kill. If you're going to take someone seriously when he says he's going to bring a gun to school, then you have to take him seriously when he says he's being picked on. That he's being hurt. That "school sucks," or that "everybody hates me." I don't know that he ever said anything like that. I don't know a thing about him. But it seems that a pattern is emerging in our schools, where the unpopular, put-upon kids are taking matters into their own hands and declaring war on those they perceive as hurting them. And if you don't take that seriously, then I can only see this trend continuing. Civility, respect, and human rights are just as deserved in the halls of our schools as they are everywhere else. Nobody deserves to be gunned down by a bullet shot by a disturbed student. But then again, nobody deserves to be slowly killed every day just because he's deemed unpopular. It's about time we started taking kids seriously, and holding them accountable for their actions. Not just the deadly, horrifying actions that capture the attention of the news media, but the small, poisonous actions taken in small doses every single day. It is, it would appear, becoming a matter of life and death." |
Taunts and bullying appear to be the motivation behind Charles Williams' alleged murder of two class mates at his San Diego high school 
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold also were haunted by bullies and eventually lashed out through gun violence at their high school, Columbine 
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