No One Deserved This

I saw the fists coming, but I couldn't stop them. My arms were held behind me and I couldn't move. Punch after punch kept smacking into my chest and stomach. There was nothing for me to do except take it.

It was spring of 1983. I was in seventh grade in Our Lady of Sorrows School in White Plains. I was being punished by some of my classmates -- punished for something they did.

It had started a few weeks earlier. No, it started a few years earlier. It really began in the fourth grade. That's when I became the target. It began then, as it often does, with the hurtful jokes children say about and to one another. I was a sensitive kid. I didn't like to hurt others' feelings. I also didn't like to have mine hurt. So when it began, I had no defense for it. I couldn't react.

My parents did not know how to react. My father, still struggling with his own anger, told me to fight. Perhaps this would have worked on some boys. But I was too gentle. I couldn't do it. I remember lying to my parents that the abuse had stopped just so they wouldn't be disappointed. However, it did not stop. Each year, it grew worse.

That spring, one of the boys in class wrote "Eric Anderson Sucks (insert expletive here)" in magic marker on the desk. Five or six classmates gathered around and laughed. It was the fourth or fifth time that month that they had ganged up. I lost it. I cried.

The teacher saw me crying and asked why. I pointed to the desk.

Smack! Smack! The punches were for pointing. One boy held my arms while the others took turns. It was only a few weeks after the incident. Those few weeks I had been socially cut off from the rest of class. No one spoke to me. No one even looked at me. It was as if I was a spirit visitor, like Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol.

I wanted to change schools. I wanted to die. I wanted to be anywhere but with those kids. But I had no choice.

Everyone in life has moments that are called gut checks -- tests of character. My son recently had one when he was going through a fear of getting hit with a baseball. He stepped out of the batter's box and kept missing the ball. He and I went to the coach's house, where Jonathan took batting practice for an hour. Swing and miss. Swing and miss. An hour! The other kids who were there complained and whined. Jonathan could have quit -- most of us would. He kept hanging in there, swinging and missing. The coaches and I knew he'd come out of it. He had guts. Sure enough, a few days later, he started stepping in toward the pitcher's mound and has been on a tear ever since.

Gut check.

The following fall, when eighth grade began, I remember my mother had read that school was to start at nine on opening day rather than the usual eight-thirty. Class had already been in session a full half-hour before I showed up. As expected, there was laughter. When I got to my seat, some of the kids started to say things. But not everyone. Not this time. After school that day I got a call from one of my classmates. He said he was surprised that I showed up at all, considering what I endured in seventh grade. He thought it took a lot of guts.

I still got abused at school in eighth grade. Real life stories aren't necessarily as neat and pretty as they should be. But it was less so, as if the bullies no longer had the heart to do it like they used to.

We all need gut checks. We all need moments that test our character. It is how we learn about ourselves and the kind of person we are. My son's experience taught him that he has heart.

I learned this about myself in seventh grade. It was an awful way to learn.