*TRIGGER WARNING: Verbal & Physical Bullying, Offensive Language
The following story is true.
The content is heavy, and there is harsh language. I don’t mean to offend.
Tomorrow is
Pink Day and it’s our one collective day to try and recognize that bullying is an issue. I made a movie about surviving being bullied. I thought I would share my story.
I was a mess going into grade nine. My mom and dad had recently divorced and after a year of “healing”, my mom was moving towards a better place. It was a lot for a 13-year-old boy to handle. In reality, I lost my grade eight year looking after her, but I am not bitter and I do not hold a grudge. When I am speaking now, I no longer include this story. It was part of my speech for a long time so that I could publicly attempt to “figure it out”. My dad has now passed. My mom has married a man who I couldn’t have handpicked to be a better role model for my late brother, our kids, or me; he is the kind of guy who could sometimes “knock the sense” into you (I say that figuratively, as he never laid a hand on us). At the same time, he would share a story from his eclectic past that somehow made sense of whatever we were dealing with.
When I made the transition into high school I had hoped it would be a new and magical place, a fresh start where I would re-establish myself after my lost year of growing up. I thought I would make new friends and become part of something — unfortunately, I was wrong.
On the second or third week of school I was in the back hallway, upstairs by the auditorium. I was sitting on a long built-in bench. It was a quiet place and was always pretty vacant during lunch. I would go there because it was away from the noise. I ate my bagged lunch and the couple of chocolate chip cookies that I had purchased from the cafeteria. On this day, it was a Wednesday because I remember thinking that I was half way done the week - two and a half days down, two and a half to go. That thought made me feel better. I wasn’t fitting in. I didn’t like high school. I was a “geek”, a label I was given on the first day.
The silence of this quiet place was broken by the sound of five senior football players coming up the stairway. They were loud and swearing. I looked down at the ground and shuffled myself into the corner hoping they would walk by. Actually, I prayed they would.
They didn’t.
“Hey there, little fag!” shouted the shortest one.
“Niner meat” said another.
“Maybe we shouldn’t…” one interjected.
“F**K it, let’s do it!” Another guy yelled, rallying them.
Where they got the idea from I will never know, but what happened next was really scary for 14-year-old me. They grabbed me and one of them produced a roll of duct tape - a BIG roll! They forced me into a ball, a sort of tucked or fetal position, then they began wrapping the tape around me, leaving almost only around my face bare. My nose and eyes left exposed, mouth taped shut.
They rolled me into the custodians closet and left me there. Alone. I peed myself. I cried. I think I was there for two to three hours, but I honestly don’t know.
Luckily for me a custodian needed something from that closet and found me. It hurt to remove the tape as my hair was stuck to it. When a teacher asked me to identify who had done this, I said that I didn’t know who they were. I told the teacher I was too scared and that it was just five senior guys. I said I wanted to be done with it. I ran home and I never wanted to return to school.
I did return to school. While those guys never bugged me again, it wasn’t ever really “dealt with" or spoken of.
Five years later, I was in grade 13 - don’t laugh, back in those days in Ontario everyone had thirteen grades, it’s called a victory lap these days. I was at home working on something for a student activity I was involved in when the phone rang. Our home phone was shared by everyone in the house, had no call display, and was attached to a wall; there were no iPhones back then. My mom answered, and then yelled it was for me.
“Who is it?” I asked. She answered that she didn’t recognize the voice.
When I picked up the phone I was shocked to hear who it was. It was one of the football players from that day five years ago. He had gone off to university to play football. He called to say he was sorry.
“I’m sorry. I never should have done what I did to you. I am sorry. I gotta go. Just know it’s been on my mind for five years and I have regretted what I did. Sorry man. Ok, I gotta go. Sorry.”
He hung up the phone and I stood there in the kitchen with a tear in my eye, the same tear I have now as I write this, sitting at my desk in my home.
My mom asked if I was okay. I told her I was and walked back to my room. I was stunned. I cried a lot. It was there for five years: the anger, the fear, and the embarrassment. I was bullied.
My personal experience was the reason why I wanted to make a film about bullying,
Rising Above. It’s about surviving bullying and moving past it. The documentary shows real people with real stories - some who recognize they had been bullies and changed, and some who were victims and survived. To date more than 55,000 youth have seen the film. I wish it were a million. We can’t scare bullies into not bullying. We can’t just tell kids it’s going to be okay, we need to show them. That’s what Rising Above is about.
It’s funny to think that I spoke for more than 25 years to students about being involved in their school years and creating a community while they are there, when in actuality, I didn’t really like high school. But, in many ways, it shaped me into the person I am. My Principal was a mentor and defended me when I screwed up. However, I still never truly loved it.
The place I LOVED was summer camp. There I could be anyone. Away from the hallways of my school I was a cool kid. I grew up at camp. The best choice my mom ever made for me was to send me to camp. I haven't missed a summer since I was six. I even started my own:
Youth Leadership Camps Canada. YLCC is a place where I hope kids and teens (over 1,600 each summer) feel safe. Maybe they’re not popular in school, and perhaps they are the victims of bullying behaviour, but at camp they’re okay. It’s why this year we are introducing a new anti-bullying program to help youth understand the hurt it can cause.
In the end, those experiences, even the really bad ones, shaped me and motivated me to create a camp, a film company, and run conferences like the
Global Student Leadership Summit and
SPARK. We need to actively change the conversation and give our youth hope and courage.
To those five guys, I’m okay. Your 15 minutes of fun, in part, built YLCC.
To the guy who called me five years later, thank you. It mattered and it helped me.
