Ignore it, and it doesn’t go away

Sue Clark

“Ignore teasing at school, and it’ll go away,” counsels Steve Smith

in his Nov. 29 column. I think he’s overly simplistic.

I still remember kids at my high school calling me the Jolly Green

Giant. At 5 feet 11 inches, I towered over all of the girls and many

of the boys. It didn’t help that I was skinny, shy and studious, a

deadly combination. With my short, nerdy haircut, I resembled an

ill-at-ease pencil. It took starting college for the jokes to stop.

Even then, I would still have to tell people the three answers to the

three questions I repeatedly endured:

How’s the weather up there?

“Fine.”

Do you play basketball?

“No, I don’t.”

How tall are you, anyway?

“Five-11.”

Cathy was a 14-year-old dark-haired beauty attending my school

last year. She was so gorgeous, I urged her mother to put together a

modeling portfolio for her. With her huge brown eyes and full lips,

she resembled a younger version of Angelina Jolie or Julia Roberts.

But she ditched school every day. She’d show up, peep shyly into my

office and say, “I’m here. I just wanted you to know.” Then she’d

ditch.

When I could find her, I’d talk to her and she’d reply in

reasoned, articulate language. She didn’t feel comfortable at our

school. Yes, she was planning to go to college. Yes, she knew she was

in danger of being transferred out.

“I can’t keep tracking you down, Cathy,” I’d sigh. “I have 100

other kids who come to school and work their hearts out to catch up

on credits. A lot of them aren’t nearly as smart as you are. I will

deal with whatever makes you feel uncomfortable, if you’ll only tell

me.”

“It won’t do any good,” she’d sigh.

Eventually, Cathy was sent before the attendance review board and

transferred to a county school in Costa Mesa. “What a waste of a

brain,” I thought.

Several months later, she dropped by school to see me. She was

beaming, but wouldn’t go into the school. We walked out and chatted

in the parking lot.

“How are you doing at Access?” I asked, assuming she was ditching

there as well.

“I’m doing awesome! I’m almost caught up on credits,” she assured

me.

“Why is it better for you there?” I was mystified.

“No one teases me,” she answered. “At your school, the boys all

called me ‘lips.’ They always were asking me out and crowding around

me and scaring me. They kept bugging me. They knew where I lived, and

I was getting prank calls all the time.”

“Why didn’t you tell me or the vice principal?”

“You would have tried to help, but they wouldn’t have stopped for

long.”

“I would have made them stop,” I said angrily.

“It’s better this way,” Cathy assured me. Ignoring the harassment

wouldn’t have helped in her case, and her only thought was to escape.

“Just ignore it,” Smith tells us.

I wish it were that easy. Last month, I attended a conference

given by agents from the federal government and the Irvine Police

Department. Its objective is to help school staffers be alert to

students who are being teased. The most horrific part of the seminar

was when we watched film clips of three students who had gone on

shooting sprees at their schools, killing and injuring their

classmates and teachers. They were interviewed in jail and asked why

they did it.

One of the boys had grown up with poverty and poor parenting. He

had been teased relentlessly for years. In anguished tones, he told

the interviewer that he felt there was no escape from the taunting.

“I told the counselor and vice principal, but it started up again.”

He felt, he said, as though it would never end.

The common thread from the three students was the perception that,

in spite of efforts to ignore the taunting, and in spite of requests

for help, the harassment just wouldn’t go away.

In my years counseling at various schools, I have worked with a

kind but chubby student new to this country called “teletubby.”

I’ve had Middle Eastern kids called carpet-heads. I worked with a

girl who was called “white trash.” One little sophomore with big eyes

was constantly called “Flounder” (a pop-eyed fish from “The Little

Mermaid”). Another overweight student was constantly harassed about

his weight and called “fat boy,” but successfully fought it by

getting help from the staff and demanding better treatment. A

profoundly depressed black student was ridiculed for his hairstyle.

It’s mean in the hallways these days.

Teasing isn’t confined to my school district, either. A friend was

attending a football game at one of Newport-Mesa’s high schools last

month and heard some students loudly advising a boy with crooked

teeth to go to a dentist. In our area, it’s sometimes a social

liability to be poor, or even middle income. This isn’t true of all

the students, but it’s certainly a common occurrence for the “haves”

to taunt the “have-nots.”

Some students do try to ignore teasing. Some get counseling, and

some report the crimes. Others find a way to excel and fit in. The

young man who was called “teletubby” found a tough crowd to get into

trouble with and eventually gained some relief from the nickname. The

girl called Flounder became a chronic truant and is now at court

school.

As for the Jolly Green Giant, I am now fairly comfortable with

being tall, thin and studious. But I remember the teasing very well.

I remember exactly where I was when a “friend” told me they’d taken a

poll in her PE class and no one liked me. I was walking home with her

from junior high, and kept myself from crying until I got to my

bedroom.

Now, when I see a child sitting by herself at lunch or desperately

clinging to the edge of a group in the hopes of being included, I

watch carefully. And when I see a student being teased, I figure out

a way to make it stop without it looking like he “ratted them out.”

Because when it comes to being teased, I won’t settle for one of

my students to just ignore it. No one should feel unsafe at my school

or any other.

We can’t ignore cruelty, or we’re condoning it.

* SUE CLARK is a Newport Beach resident and a high school guidance

counselor at Creekside High School in Irvine.