“He Was Right”

JESSICA MCCANN, 2005

Winner of the 2005 “Mix It Up” Essay Contest at www.tolerance.org

            In sixth grade, my friend Laurie and I thought we were so cool. To us, being considered "popular" gave us the right to treat people however we wanted. I remember this one kid who was "weird" with his ghost white skin, black hair and cold, empty eyes. He never spoke, and neither of us probably would have ever noticed him if he hadn't sat in front of us in French class. But he sat right there, making us quite aware of his "weirdness," which gave us permission to torture him. We would giggle extra loud and make comments in hopes of irking him, but he would stay silent. Then we would throw things at him, tiny crumpled up pieces of paper, and once, we even wrote on the back of his thin, white t-shirt in pencil. However, he never complained, never told the teacher, and instead tolerated our abuse, complacently allowing us to continue.

            After that school year was over, he signed my yearbook. "You were right and I was wrong," he wrote. I never knew what those words meant, and yet they have stuck with me throughout the years.

            I haven't had a class with that boy since sixth grade French, but over the last five years, I have watched him from afar. He has changed, grown tall and lanky. He's still pale, almost translucent, but now he dresses in black jeans and tight black shirts. He stomps through the hallways, his long legs moving quickly, one after another, and a dark, distant glaze of misery coats his eyes.

            I have changed too. A few years ago, I separated myself from the ¡̊popular¡+ crowd, realizing that partying was not only threatening my health, but my future. Since then, I have felt the same isolation and rejection from my peers that I had carelessly shown to this boy in the sixth grade. Although no one has bluntly tortured me, I have felt their evil glares, seen their icy indifference and heard their mean comments. While I have become accustomed to this treatment, sometimes it still hurts. Because I now know how it feels to be excluded, I would never do this to anyone else. But what hurts more is just the knowledge that years ago, I intentionally made an innocent kid in sixth grade French class feel like I do now.

            Today instead of laughing each time I see him stalking past me like a knight of doom, a ghost of death, a miserable kid, guilt seeps into my pores and I remorsefully turn my head to the ground. Somehow, I feel I am responsible.

            However, a few weeks ago I talked to him. We were both in the library, sitting at our separate computers in silence until a mutual acquaintance arrived. She and I were talking about computers- how frustrating popups and viruses can be- when the boy interrupted us, offering tips and advice on how to avoid these problems and even suggesting software to purchase. This conversation led to the typical talk of high school seniors: colleges, SATS and the future.

            Amidst all of this, I could not get one thing out of my head- the fact that I was talking to the boy that I had bullied as a sixth grader, and he wasn't being rude to me, not returning the cruel treatment I had given him years before. He was a nice, helpful, normal, although misunderstood, teenager. For the first time since the sixth grade, I got over my shame. I stopped hiding from his eyes that seemed to burn into me, melting all of the facades I had tried to hide beneath. I allowed myself to look him in the eye, to reveal to him all of the guilt that has harbored within me for the past few years and allowed him to see that yes, I am sorry, and that no- he was “right” and I was “wrong”- treating him as I did.