Memories of bullies

Today's front page Wall Street Journal feature is a riveting account of a typical school bully and his surprising (and, to me, satisfying) end. Upon being informed through his family that the schoolmate who had inflicted endless torture on him during the second through fifth grades had died of AIDS, reporter Jonathan Eng went back and discovered the truth about his former classmate's violent family life and the aggressive lifestyle that led to his demise. Definitely worth reading, and do it today, while it's still free.

I too had a bully who made my life miserable during grade school. I was the smallest kid in the class and he was the biggest. From the third grade to the seventh, I was oppressed by a boy named Bruce H_______. There was little actual pounding, more chasing (I got to be surprisingly fast for my size) and intimidation. Recognizing the odds -- by fourth grade, he was as big as some of the seventh graders -- I almost never fought back, except for once or twice when I was completely enraged. And although we attended a parochial (Lutheran) school, neither the teachers nor my parents did anything about the incessant bullying. Only last year -- approximately 35 years after the fact -- did my mother reveal an extremely pertinent fact: Bruce's father was the president of the congregation that ran the school and of which our parents were all members, and he ran it with an iron hand. My parents were afraid of social retaliation if they went to the H_______s with any complaints. So they left me and Bruce to work it out together.

We didn't work it out. He finally grew out of it somewhat, and then in the middle of the eighth grade (the school was K-8), my family moved away and I never saw him again. But I still have fantasies about showing up at his front door and wreaking revenge. A web search shows he lives in suburban St. Louis and is part of a Christian businessman's group. I suppose that's no more pathetic than some of the organizations I've been part of. But I would have been much more satisfied if I'd found, like the author of the WSJ article, that Bruce had died penniless of a hideous disease. That's where my sense of compassion and my maturity end.