The journal prompt from school:
You had a lesson with Ms. I or Mrs. T about bullying. Write a summary of what you learned. What is bullying? What’s the difference between bullying and teasing?
I've begun answering the questions, too -- what's good for the goose and all that:
When I was about fourteen, I went to a three-week church summer camp in Texas. It was held on a college campus, and we campers stayed in the college dorms. I don't remember much about the time we spent in the dorms, but one thing stands out: our mistreatment of a boy named Sam.
Looking back on it, I realize Sam was likely on the autism spectrum, but autism wasn't a word any of us had even heard of, and to many campers, Sam was just strange. As one might expect, that led to Sam being picked on. I'm not sure any of it was malicious: we were just trying to be irritating and perhaps occasionally infuriating. And yes, that use of "we" does constitute a confession: with much shame, I admit that I took part in the hazing as well.
Today's prompt has got me thinking about whether or not we were bullying Sam. Given the fact that we weren't trying to intimidate or to frighten Sam but just trying to annoy or even anger him, I would be tempted to argue that it wasn't bullying in the strictest sense. But some of the boys took things so far that they undoubtedly made life miserable for Sam. Some of the things we did hurt him emotionally. I'm sure he hated the entire camp experience and likely begged his parents to let him come home. However I label it (and my reticence about calling it bullying is not an effort to diminish my own culpability but rather an effort to apply the term accurately), it was an awful thing to do, a source of shame for me all these decades later.
But more than my cruelty haunts me still: why did I even part in that? Several of the boys leading the hazing were a couple of years older than I was, and perhaps that explains some of it. It felt good to be accepted by the older kids, even if it was acceptance of a dubious nature. Yet I, too, had been picked on mercilessly at times in school, and I knew how awful that felt.
I wish I'd had the guts to stand up for Sam or at least the common decency not to participate. But I didn't.