Lawsuit

A German kid, living in Colorado, may be the first person to sue a tormentor under a new hate-crime bill.

In a lot of ways that kid looks like I did at twelve. In the ninth grade I attended four different schools during the course of the year, ending up in the small-town junior high school in the town where my father lived. Whenever things became too difficult for my mother, my sister and I went to live with our father. As a teenager there was a lot of shuttling into and out of the same small-town school, where I perennially seemed to be the new kid.

As a right of passage the new kid is always teased. However, I came from an unstable home environment and I had no sense of proportion or distance. I took everything too seriously. At one point I decided to stop going to school. I skipped for about two straight weeks. Because I was always in and out of that school, it took a while for anyone to really notice. Finally I was dragged back and sat in front of the principal to explain myself. I told him I didn't want to go to school because no one liked me. He told me I didn't have a choice and that if I didn't go to school my father would go to jail. He also told me that, of course all of the kids liked me. I just needed to give them a chance. It was all my fault.

One morning, I don't remember why, I was late to school. Instead of going to my locker, I had to run to my first class. During the morning announcements over the intercom the principal made some sort of announcement about how every one who went to that school had the right to go to school without being tormented and harassed. There were several of us who were targets, so while I thought the announcement was a little odd, I didn't really think too much about it. Then one of the kids leaned across the aisle and said, "He's talking about you."

Nothing out of the ordinary had happened. I probably had a dramatic incident with another student every other week, and that was the down week. "Really?"

"Yeah. Somebody put a poster up on your locker. It wasn't very nice."

I never saw the poster and no one ever said anything more about it to me. I'm sure it would be tame compared to what a kid today might do. Anyway, I didn't think anything about. Stuff like that was happening to me all the time and finally someone else saw it. I went about my day, not getting to my locker until lunch time.

When I opened my locker, I discovered that whoever had decorated the outside had also decorated the inside. It must have been several boys -- girls would never have done this. They had spit green loogeys all over everything. The books that had been in the locker, my gym clothes, everything was covered in slime.

I closed the door and walked directly into the principals office. People who know me now would have no problem believing this story, but then I was a shy, quiet, bullied twelve year old. The principle was in a meeting, which I interrupted. I demanded that he come to my locker. When he saw what was inside he said, "What do you want me to do about it."

"I want you to have someone clean it up."

"It's not their job to clean the inside of your locker."

"Then I'll use another locker until they do."

I didn't touch any of my books. I didn't do any of my homework, because I wouldn't touch any of my books. I just went to class and sat in a desk. It took about a month, but finally they cleaned my locker and gave me new books.

Everybody gets teased in school, but unless you've experienced it on this level you have no idea what this kid in Colorado is going through or how it will effect the rest of his life. For years he's going to see green slime where there is none. Maybe for the rest of his life he's going to expect that the rug is going to be pulled out from under him when he least expects it, so he'll always expect it to prevent it from happening.

And suing won't help. Even if he wins. Especially if he wins. The kids will never let him forget that he had to get someone bigger to handle his problem.

After that sliming incident, I there were no more overt acts, but as the kids got older the tormenting became more subtle. Kids who were supposed to be my friends got into the act. I don't know if it was out of peer pressure or what. I do know that some pretty mean things were said and done, and that I spent most of my twenties and thirties trying to get my bearings in the real world.

What this kid needs to do is grow up and become rich and famous on Broadway. That'll show 'em.