“Why don’t they like me?” my classmate would ask me every morning during recess at school. I remember her as the black sheep of our class for more than three years. No one liked her. I don’t know why. She was really sweet and bubbly but to this day I can’t figure out why she got bullied so much. It wasn’t because of what she wore of course since we went to a private school. But as I’m typing this, I’m trying to dig up something that made the rest of the girls hate her so much but I can’t. Everyday she would come to school with the biggest and brightest smile I’ve ever seen, but she would end the day with red, puffy eyes with filled with tears. People would push her, taunt her, and even straight up ask her why was she so fat. She didn’t know what to do. She was lost. She did almost everything to end the bullying but no one really did try to help her, even me. I advised her to tell her mom, but the next day she told me she’d be transferring to a new school.
Adults wouldn’t expect these things coming from a bunch of third grade girls, but between us all, we knew the truth. We knew we were much more than a bunch of third grade girls with braided hair and were capable of much more than playing with dolls. We knew what adults didn’t think we would know and we could do so much more than steal someone else’s crayons just to see them cry. But of course that was only between our classmates.
People have this great fantasy of kids running around and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while much more is happening. Adults need to open their eyes and realize that what happened to my classmate wasn’t just one person that bullied her. The whole class was aware of what was happening but kept it between us. Some kids are banging on the S.O.S button but there’s no response at all. Kids don’t have a good sense of empathy. Teachers and parents deny accepting the fact that kids know what they are doing. Good or bad.