The Village Is Broken

Recently I read about a nine year old boy who committed suicide because he had been bullied frequently at school over the last year.  That’s right, the boy was nine years old.  He hung himself in his bedroom.  While the story captured little media attention it caused my Billbrain to go into hyper-drive.  I couldn’t wrap my head around a nine year committing suicide.

I turned nine years old in February of 1970.  I was a student in Miss Sally Parkers third grade class at Johnson Heights Elementary.  For most of the year, I sat next to Tara Miller, a dark haired girl with the greenest of green eyes.  My friends and I played kick ball and four-square during recess.  That summer, I would play for the White Sox in the Dapper Dan Little League.  It was a magical time in my life when my greatest worry was learning how to play  the flutophone in Miss Wheelers music class.

Not leaving all of my third grade memories to my memory I got out my class photo (yes, my mom saved everything from my childhood) and took a trip down Memory Lane.  The photo showed thirty boys and girls all smiling for the camera but I couldn’t help but wonder if, under those smiles, some of my classmates didn’t feel bullied.  Kids could be mean back then and for sure kids can mean be now.  But back then we could go home and get away from the bullies, there was no 24 hour social media that allowed the bullying to go on after school was over.  We could retreat to the safety of our homes.  Today there is nowhere to run to for safety.  For the life of me, I cannot imagine the torment and horror that a nine year would endure that would tragically end in suicide.

While I am still friends with many of my classmates in that school photo I often wonder where life has taken the others and I wonder if I was a positive factor in their life or would they look back differently at being a classmate of mine.  Honestly, the years have eroded most of my memories of the time I spent as a nine year old in Miss Parkers third grade class.  I don’t remember being bullied and I don’t remember being a bully to others.  Well, truth be told, there was this girl in my class whose hair I pulled on a regular basis when we were on the playground but it was done more as a act of endearment...

I think to some degree that it does take a village to raise a child, however, when a nine year-old is bullied so viciously that he takes his own life, the village is broken.  God help us.

Be well.

Bill