I won’t name names but I will never forget the time when a new student came to my school and wreaked havoc for many years after. Because teachers often relied on alphabetical seating I found myself in close proximity to him over and over again. Somehow we always ended up in the same class and almost always I seemed to be chosen to endure his bad behavior because I was a quiet child who had been counseled by my parents to respect the teachers and my fellow students. My mother had also cautioned me to ignore any taunts from my classmates as a sign of immaturity or perhaps a lack of guidance at home. Thus I learned how to tune out the insults and attempts at bullying me that the egregious kid seemed to find joy in producing.  

Through the years of putting up with him I had grown weary of being the better person when this boy set forth on one of his many attempts to raise my ire. I suppose that his abuse had finally gotten to me so I hatched a plan in my mind to gig him into behaving so badly that maybe he might finally be sent away. I waited for a moment to outfox him and my patience finally paid off. 

It was an ordinary day and the kid was up to his usual high jinx when the teacher very professionally and politely asked him to stand up to read a paragraph in our history book. He was actually a good reader with a booming voice that made him a wise choice for public recitations. For some reason, however, he decided that he preferred not to follow her command even though he usually enjoyed the limelight of being chosen to read in spite of his other offensive foibles. On this day he sat defiantly in his chair and dared her with his stare to push him too far.

I suppose that the teacher was as weary of his recalcitrance as I was because instead of selecting someone else to read she drew a line in the stand. She insisted that he do as he had been told. That is when I saw my opportunity to push him to a point of no return. Because I sat right behind him, I leaned forward and whispered that he did not need to comply. After hesitating for a moment he boldly told the teacher that he was tired and that he did not want to read. He further taunted her by saying that she had no right to force him to do anything. 

As the enraged teacher began walking toward the boy’s desk I prodded him one more time by whispering that he was well within in his rights. Somehow he was emboldened to plant his feet in total defiance and when the teacher was finally standing over him he made the huge mistake of cursing with words that shocked us all. 

Everything escalated from there. The next thing I knew he had lost it so much that he came out of his chair with his fist clenched as though he was ready to hit the teacher. At that point I really worried about what I had done and wondered if the whole situation was getting more out of hand than I had imagined. The teacher stopped him cold when she ordered one of my classmates to run to the office to get the principal. Upon hearing those words the boy collapsed back into his chair crying like a baby and begging for forgiveness from the teacher. 

We all sat in a kind of stunned silence as we awaited the conclusion of this horrific situation. The only sound was that of the sobbing boy who at that point realized that he had gone too far. When the principal arrived he meekly followed her out of the classroom and then our teacher continued the lesson as though nothing had happened. 

I suddenly felt guilty for what I had done and yet when the bully who had tortured so many kids for so long never returned I felt a bit like a heroine who would never be able to admit my part in the terrible ending of his time at our school. Instead the lesson that I learned was that those who bully us are usually more fragile than we are. They use force and insults to control us but in reality that are very weak. 

I would lie if I said that I felt sorrow for that kid. Over many years he had insulted authority and done his best to find vulnerable classmates to torment. I never understood how he had lasted so long without dire consequences for his behavior and yet it bothered me that I had purposely pushed him to be defiant. 

I’ve thought about that awful boy so many times over the years. I wonder what eventually happened to him. I would like to think that he outgrew his domineering ways but part of me worries that he only continued his hatefulness. His was not a matter of immaturity but a seemingly determined way to feel better about himself by asserting his power over others.  On the other hand maybe just maybe he learned something that day and went on to mature and treat others with respect and kindness. I suppose I will never know. 

Even as a teacher whenever I encountered such broken students I found it difficult to understand what horrific things made them the way that they were. I saw that some of them wanted to be different but literally did not know how to be so. I heard from parents who were afraid of their own children. I listened to stories about some of these bullies that were frightening. Somehow either by dent of some terrible mental illness or lack of guidance the existence of such souls was a constant challenge that happened over and over again. Once in a great while I was actually successful in helping to turn these kinds of children around but most of the time their difficulties were too ingrained to change. 

Now we have a man in the White House who showed signs of such ugliness when he was a boy. He taunted his classmates and his siblings but nobody really stopped him. They simply pushed him from one place to another as he lied and cheated and bullied his way through life. They flattered him by implying that he was somehow better and stronger than others to keep him at bay. They created a monster who is terrorizing the world. At this point it’s time for all of us to call him out, not with guile but with courage and honor. He is too old to change but not too old to be held accountable for all the chaos he has created.  As a child he was just an annoyance. As the leader of one of the most powerful countries on earth he is a danger to us all.