With retirement came extra time I never knew existed, and the vast majority of the last six months has resulted in beautiful moments. We’ve done some travelling. I’ve played more golf than ever before. We joined a fitness club.
Thanks to this website, I’ve been able to revisit my love of writing. And now I’m three-plus months into pursuing something that’s always intrigued me …learning to play guitar. (Let’s just say the F chord is aptly named.)
But with extra time came more opportunity to spend time with my thoughts and memories, and not all of them have been pleasant. We all have regrets, of course, but when I look back on some of my formative years, I really don’t like the view.
You see, I was a bully in 5th and 6th grade and I’m ashamed of it.
I was a sales person most of my career, and I’ve taken more than one psychological test to identify strengths and weaknesses. Invariably, my results pointed to the fact that what drove me was a desire to be “liked” instead of obsessing about money, awards or fancy objects.
I do believe people buy from people they like and respect, and I used that as my motto in building a successful career. But in recent months, I have come to realize that this convenient “philosophy” was really rooted in something much deeper — my fear of being left out.
Today, when I speak with my grandchildren, I’m curious about how they’re treated and how they treat others. These discussions return me to 5th and 6th grade, and I cringe when I think about how often I disrespected other students, a few in particular. Right now, our grandkids are loving and caring, and I only hope they can hold onto that as they encounter the challenges of growing up.
In elementary school, I was a decent student but never head of the class. I was an “okay” athlete but never the fastest or most talented. I tried – too hard, I now see – to make up for my shortcomings with a sense of humor and the desire to be one of the “cool” kids. My bullying was never physical, but to a degree the physical pain might have been better. I was often harsh in my assessments of others kids, usually behind their backs; in a word, I was mean. And a coward. Physical bruises heal; psychological bruises don’t.
It was a strange dynamic, to be honest, and maybe this behavior is more common than I realize. Someone in our grade was always being ignored or treated poorly. We called it being “dropped” and I too experienced it and didn’t like it one bit. I tried to make sure I wasn’t the “droppee” by tearing other kids down in a futile effort to make myself look better. I am embarrassed to this day that I inflicted pain on classmates that had done nothing wrong.
Being 11 or 12 is an awful time in life for a lot of kids. Expectations from parents and teachers are elevated. Hormones are just starting to rage. We start paying more attention to hygiene and caring what we look like.
The last thing anyone needs at that age is for some bully to treat them like they don’t exist. And yet, there I was doing just that. One of the guys I disrespected moved away from South Bend and we haven’t seen each other in years. Another committed suicide in his 30s.
To my parents’ credit, they recognized what was happening and scolded me for being so hurtful. They forced me to apologize –- in person — to the targets of my painful words. Being good people, they insisted that I pray for forgiveness and encouraged me to address my behavior in the confessional. I did. And I still do.
Junior high school, high school and college brought other stresses, as did a work life filled with deadlines and sometimes angry customers. Since retiring, though, many of those pressures have dissipated and I’ve found myself searching for just who I really am and why I treated others so cruelly so many years ago.
I understand now that many of the things I’ve done and continue to do in my relationships are a subconscious attempt to make up for the way I treated certain people in my youth.
Life is truly a work in progress. My cruel behavior at a crucial time in my life still weighs heavily on me, and all I can now do is apologize to those impacted and try to be a better friend in the future. Who knew how much a little introspection can hurt?