1989

The torment of seventh grade began. On top of all the bullying I was receiving from the hands of this girl I developed a cyst on my neck. I had it drained to see what it was. A very painful process. It came back noncancerous so they went in and removed it. I had a to wear a bandage around me neck for several weeks.


The girl esculated her torment on me. She would hit me almost every day. My parents finally caught on when I would be fine in the morning but would call home sick during fifth period. I wouldn't tell them for awhile since I didn't want to be a snitch but I finally told them what was happening. They contacted the school and my two teachers were notified. My English teacher did everything in her power to make sure that girl didn't come anywhere near me but my Social Studies teacher turned a blind eye to it.


One time I was sitting at my desk in front of his desk doing my homework and she went past to sharpen her pencil. She hit me on the way there and hit me on the way back. When she got away with it for the next few minutes she would take everyones pencil around her and go sharpen their pencils hitting me both on the way there and on the way back. I finally got up and went to the teacher to ask him to help with a question just to get away from it. He just gave me the answer and she just waited by my desk talking to her friend that sat in front of me until I returned to my desk. After that I was so frustrated I just started crying. Her friend saw me and said loudly, "She's crying." The teacher asked me why and I told him it was because she hit me.


I had made a friend named Michael at the first of seventh grade. He always was teased by this girl at first but when she focused on me he was left alone. I tried to confide in him and get some support but he just said, "At least she is not picking on me anymore." I felt betrayed and alone.


My teachers were supposed to keep us sitting away from each other. My English teacher always had us clear across the room from each other. My social studies teacher not so much. Then he put us kiddie corner from each other. I had a brand new text book that year. She had stopped hitting me since she was warned that if she hit me again she would be in serious trouble. But she started sexually harrassing me. I didn't know that was what it was called back then but she would tell me what to do with myself and things to use. She would also call me names that were sexual in nature. Well, one day when she was sitting kiddie corner from she spat a big old loogie (sp?) in my text book. I just turned the page and never went back to that page. She continued to barage me with insults. I told the teacher later that he needed to move me. He did; to the back of the classroom in a row of empty desk away from everyone else. I was being punished for being bullied. One day he left the classroom and she came back and started harrassing me again and started slapping me on my arms. Not hard since she didn't want to be accused of hitting me but it continued until the teacher returned and then she ran back to her seat.

I can't remember if I went home crying or something else but my parents learned that the harrassing had continued. My dad was livid. He wanted to press charges but I didn't want that since I didn't want the other kids to gang up on me.

The next day I was called out of class and taken down to the counselor's office. There sat my parents with a police officer. The counselor was so mad that I hadn't told him because he said he would have done something. But I was shy and didn't want to cause trouble so I didn't tell and if someone had asked I wouldn't of lied but no one asked if it continued. Anyway, I told them I didn't want to press charges but my dad said he was pressing charges on my behalf since he was my father. I had to write out a police report and write down everything she had said or called me even the swear words and I had never sworn before. After that they immediately switched my two classes so I would no longer be in any classes with her. For the first few weeks I was afraid of passing her in the hall but I never saw her again besides from a distance.

After I went back to class she was called out of class and I am unsure if they arrested her but she was told of the charges and had to go to court and stuff. I never learned the end of that. The next day in PE (another class I had with a lot of her friends but not her) they really jumped on my case for pressing charges on her. My locker partner turned against me and told me she didn't want to be my friend anymore (except at church) because of what I did. A couple of the girls wanted to beat me up right then but that soon passed and they left me alone.

I now had social studies 6th period and I became good friends with a girl named Carrie. By the next year she was one of my best friends. I had English 7th and my crush was in that class and he sat behind me and would play with my hair. A couple of the girls I had grown up with told him to be nice to me. It was nice to finally feel safe at school again.

In the meantime my growth on my neck grew back. It was discovered that it was a tumor growing off my thyroid gland. During that summer I underwent surgery to have it removed. I still have the scar although it has faded over the years. Some people asked if it was a suicide scar. The surgeon, Dr. Ellingham, reminded me of Albert Einstein. He was very nice. He had to remove a bone in my neck to get all of the tumor and he learned that if it was left to grow more it eventually would have strangled me. My Granddad Dudley had a similar tumor when he was 2 that nearly killed him.

That fall I started 8th grade. I lockered in the 9th grade hall and had first lunch. My sister's friend Dinece was in 9th grade and since my sister went off to high school Dinece started hanging out with me and Carrie and soon the three of us were best friends. We all liked the NKOTB. We also would go to the football and basketball games together. My crush played both in 8th grade.

Julie had moved back at the beginning of the year so she was my locker partner. That summer while camping we met the cousin of the girl that had been bullying me the year before. She told my sister and I that the girl was pregnant. I told Julie. No one else. Julie not being there the year before didn't know that one of our friends from elementary school had become friends with the girl the year before and she told her (no one else.) That ex-friend ran straight to the girl and told her I was spreading rumors about her. She put it out that she was going to beat me up after school. I ran from my locker to the bus never looking back.

Soon that girl disappeared from the school. She had transferred to the other junior high because her friends were threatening her. She was pregnant and by her best friend's boyfriend. The last I ever heard about that girl was an article in the paper when I was 15 and it stated her name, age, and that she was the mother of two. She had dropped out of school and gotten pregnant again and blamed it on the town being so small and not having anything else to do.

Eighth grade was a much better year for me. Julie moved back to Texas permanently shortly after 8th grade started but I still had my other two best friends.