Tag: Bullying

The Levis

I just want to go on record that, despite what the kids at school called me, we were not “white trash”. We were “poor-but-proud”. As near as I can tell, the main difference between the two categories had to do with the fact that we owned land. In any event, when I was a child we had very little money.

Up through the fourth grade that wasn’t all that big a deal. After all, all of my friends were in the same boat. In the small, church-based segregation academy I attended until the end of the fourth grade, I was very unaware of fashion. We just wore jeans and shirts – nobody wore Levis. Well, except that one kid. But anyway.

But in the fifth grade, the closing of that school meant I had to go to the consolidated public elementary school. No one at East Tate Elementary wore jeans from the dollar store. All their jeans had names on them – Lee, Levis, Wrangler. And the shoes…no longer could you just wear plain old sneakers. Now there was Nike, and Puma, and Adidas, and Kangaroos (they had a pocket!). And all of those things cost money.

Money we did not have.

I begged my mom to buy me a pair of Levis.

“Just one pair,” I would say. “I will wash them every night.”

But no. Every August we would buy five pairs of cheap jeans that were that horrible, very uncool dark indigo blue color. And we would buy them a size too big, so I could grow into them because we both knew there would be no buying new ones until next August.

But I continued to beg and ask.

One particular Saturday, Mom had been out hitting yard sales and thrift stores, and she came home with a glint in her eye. Held aloft in her hands was a pair of button fly Levi Jeans. Sure, they were slightly faded, but that only added to the appeal.

Monday, I put them on, proud of my new station in life. I strutted when I got off that school bus!

I made it till the second recess, after 4th period. That was when one beloved Child of God informed me that, unlike his Levi jeans, mine had a white patch on the right rear pocket. In other words, they were “girl” jeans.

Oh no. Dear God, no.

As I write this 40 years later I still feel the anguish and shame that went through me as he and his friends stood around me, pointing and chanting. “Girl’s jeans, girl’s jeans. Hugh’s wearing girl jeans. ”

They called me names I had never heard before that called my sexuality into question – words I would look up in the dictionary that night when I got home. I was in fifth grade – what I knew about sexuality was confined to the neighbor’s dog that had gotten to our hound when she was in heat.

I raced into the bathroom, where I hid the rest of recess. I untucked my shirt, hoping to cover the offending label. But my hiding it made it worse, and for the rest of the day, the kids rode me without mercy. Through the remaining classes, people looked at me and giggled, pointing at me. And if I got up to sharpen my pencil, displaying the offensive tag, the laughter was so loud the teacher had to tell everyone to be quiet.

When I got home that day, after the longest bus ride ever, I hid those jeans in the bottom of my closet so I would not accidentally wear them ever again.

It was only a few days before Mom noticed they were out of the rotation. She tormented me to no end that I just “had” to have a pair of Levis, and there she went, spending her hard-earned money on Levis, and did I wear them? No sir, I did not.

In the cold, rational light of 2022, I wish that 10-year-old Hugh had been stronger. I wish someone had told him that clothes were not gendered. I wish the teachers had stood up for him.

But, as Dad used to say, if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.

I have talked to other people who grew up poor, and they sometimes say things like, “We didn’t know we were poor.” By the time I was 10, I knew we were poor. The kids at the public school never tired of telling me.

But I knew that Mom had bought me those jeans because she loved me.  I knew that she hunted the places we could afford to find them and that the money she spent on them was money that should have gone to groceries, or stuff for the baby, or any number of things. I knew that her buying me those jeans was my mom’s way of saying “You matter to me. Your happiness matters to me. You are worth the trouble I am going to to try to make this thing you want, happen. ” And because I knew all of that, there was no way on God’s green earth I was going to tell her she bought the wrong thing and caused me ridicule.

That was the last time she bought me a name-brand anything. I would not wear a pair of Levis again until I was 16 and working after school at the grocery store and could buy them myself.

And I have still never told her why I quit wearing that pair of jeans. I would have rather had her think me ungrateful than for her to feel shame or to know she caused me to suffer. Ten-year-old me did not want her to think her love for me was, in any way, flawed.

And I still don’t.

The Bully

He was a nerdy kid. Let’s call him Brian.

Brian’s family had been living in England before moving back to the States. He didn’t really fit in.

To start with, he was very small. Like, much smaller than other kids his age. He was a year behind me when we shared Algebra II class, when I was in the 11th grade.  He looked like a 6th grader when he was in the 10th grade.

But a well-dressed 6th grader, because he wore a tie most days, and often a blazer. Our school was in the middle of a dairy farm, and smelled strongly of cow manure. Blazers and ties were seldom seen. We believed his clothing was a holdover from his time in the UK, but who knows. Not me, anyway.  I don’t remember asking him much about himself. He also wore product in his hair, which he wore in a style reminiscent of something from the movie Grease.

Brian also spoke very properly, and sneered at our accents. He made us feel inferior – like he really knew he was better than us. Brian didn’t make it easy to like him, and we tended to distrust anyone who is different.

There was a Senior in that Algebra II class as well – let’s call him Steve. Steve was very popular. And attractive. And a cut up. Girls thought he was adorable.

I was not popular. Nor adorable. Nor attractive. In fact, the only thing I really had going for me was that Steve thought I was funny. It helped that we both were failing this class, so we bonded over that.

And for some reason, Steve seemed set to make Brian’s life miserable. I don’t think Steve really thought poorly of Brian – it’s just that Brian was easy to pick on, and was often the butt of Steve’s jokes. Brian had a last name that seemed tailor-made for making fun of. Steve was happy to oblige.

I was desperate to fit in, so I made fun of Brian too. This was another way Steve and I bonded – over our shared hazing of Brian. Once, I remember Brian falling asleep at his desk, and I tied his shoe laces together. Steve then slammed a book down, and Brian jumped up, and then fell on his face. We all laughed. The teacher laughed.

Brian didn’t laugh.

When I watch Back to the Future and I see the way Marty McFly’s dad acts around Biff – that good natured aww shucks sort of ingratiating thing he did – that was how Brian acted towards Steve and me.

These days we would say that Brian was being bullied by Steve and I. At the time, we made snide comments about Brian’s being gay, but he wasn’t – he was just different. I was different too, but I sought out someone who I could feel superior to so I could be assured that I was not on the bottom.

The way we treated Brian was wrong, on multiple levels. It was wrong, period, but I also hate that I did it in order to suck up to someone else. I was cruel in order to be popular. Several people that year mentioned, when they signed my yearbook, how funny I was in Algebra II class. In other words, I was funny and liked because I was cruel to Brian.

I only remember Brian being at school that one year. Some folks said his family moved to Memphis. I never heard from him again. Steve graduated and now is a truck driver. And I did lots of things before I ended up being me.

Recently, I wondered what became of Brian. I looked him up on Facebook. He had a very distinctive name, and so it didn’t take long to find him. He had gone into the Army right after high school, and there were lots of pictures of him still looking small, but otherwise very brave in his desert fatigues during Desert Storm. He then became a cop, and there are lots of pictures of him with guns, with “thin blue line” posters, pictures of him looking very serious and posed, like he is trying to convince himself that he was really strong.

There were pictures of him and his wife and their two kids. He apparently liked to hunt and had taught his son to hunt. There were lots of overtly patriotic imagery too. It seems as an adult, Brian liked to project an image of strength.

Two things stood out: Although we had gone to the same school, we had no shared friends on Facebook. And his last Facebook update was in the middle of 2018. I Googled his (rather distinctive) name and learned he had died from suicide in June of 2018.

A therapist who knew me pretty well once asked me what I was repenting of to live the sort of life I do now. I told her it wasn’t quite that simple of a story, but there were many stories. And one of those stories would have been about Brian.

There is no way to wrap this up prettily. I wish I could tell you that before he died, Brian and I had made amends. That I was able to ask his forgiveness before he died. That he had forgiven me for the way I bullied him in the fall of 1988 so popular people would like me.

I wish I could tell you any of that. But that’s the thing about death – it stops everything in its tracks. It takes away all your options. And if I have learned anything in life, it is the futility of wishing you had a different past.

But as long as you are alive, you can still have a different future.