The Short essay “If You Knew Then What I Know Now” by Ryan
Van Meter is a first-hand account about a bullying experience in the sixth grade.
Ryan has to go over to one of his classmate’s houses to do a school project.
When Ryan arrives, he finds that his classmates have plotted to make fun of
him. Immediately upon walking into the bedroom, he finds two boys in his class “making
out”. They are kissing with their hand in between their mouths, they pretend to
be surprised when he walks into the room and one of them says, “Ryan, you like
to kiss boys right?”. They assume he is gay because, in the essay he describes
that he feels awkward being friends with boys his own age and only is friends
with girls. He is trying to hang out with boys his age, he is feeling pressures
from society and peer groups to be “normal”, and have friends of the same sex,
he also describes that his mother is also pressuring him to get more friends
who are boys.
Clearly,
the societal pressures and family pressures did not work in his advantage, as
he was bullied when he did try to hang out with classmates outside of school. And
it turns out later in life, Ryan is gay. This “kiss” he saw, stays with him
forever. Every time he sees a kiss, kisses his boyfriend and thinks about
kissing he pictures this “fake bully kiss”. This “kiss” has obviously severely
affected the way he thinks, and as a snowball effect, it has skewed his
relationships and potential future relationships.
If I were
Ryan’s sixth grade guidance counselor, what would I have told him? How would we
have nipped this in the bud before it escalated to the point where it is currently?
The point that it is completely eating him up inside for years after the fact. If
I were his counselor (let’s assume, for the sake of this argument, he told his
parents and they called the counselor). First, I would not get the bullies
involved. I feel that the more the bullying is talked about, the more the
victim will dwell on it, thus making the issue worse. To make the student feel
like they are not alone in being bullied. Though it may be unprofessional, I
would share my own bullying experiences to make them trust me. Open lines of
trust are crucial in any kind of relationship. It does not matter if it is a
school relationship, a working relationship, a family relationship or a friend
relationship, trust is critical!
I would then ask him if he has any close
friends he feels more comfortable talking with, or set them up with a peer who
has had a similar experience, and they can offer tips on how they overcame how
they were bullied. A thing that would be beneficial for schools to implement would
be a voluntary program, where students who have been bullied join this group.
They would meet on a scheduled basis, and discuss tips and ways to overcome
bullying and prevent bullying in the future. The last thing a sixth grader
wants is an adult trying to help them to conform and be normal, just like
everyone else. At that age, it is important to discover their own identity. The
less this topic is interfered with as an adult, the better. The reasoning for
this thought is because kids don’t want adults in their own business. At this
stage of development, preadolescents are trying to establish their place in the
world, trying to find their social group. They are trying to define themselves,
and figure out who they are; this includes maybe beginning to think about their
sexuality.
This is a great plan to try to
solve Ryan’s dilemma. Why? Personally, I have been bullied by friends and I have
been the bully. I remember in high school, my mom called my guidance counselor
and she called the bully and me into her office to ‘talk it out’. This “supervised
talking it out” I experienced created more tension that anything. And I dwelled
on that destroyed friendship until I graduated. I completely wasted the
remainder of my high school career, looking back, it could have been better and
I could have made the best out of the remainder of high school. Instead I dwelled
on the fact that I had lost some friends because of the tension created by
bullying. If there was a counselor who did things differently, I feel that
things could have ended differently. I also wish there was a ‘bullied group’
that I could have participated in. Airing out problems with peers who have had
the same experiences somehow seems to validate the anxieties and fears and
problems that some are experiencing.
References
Van
Meter, R. (2005). If You Knew Then What I Know Now. In Williford, L and
Martrone, M (Eds.), Touchstone anthology of contemporary and creative
nonfiction: Work from 1970 to present (pp. 520-524). New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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