March 17th, 2025
I was always the shortest fellow in my school. Being short had its benefits; at high school graduation, they sorted the boys by height, so I was at the front of the line.
But being the shortest kid had a lot of downsides. I was the target of every bully that ever lived. One of those bullies was a fellow named Peter Connor. This was in the seventh grade at Our Lady of the Assumption School in Sacramento, California. I had volunteered to be part of the “traffic patrol”. There were five of us: four flaggers and one leader. The flaggers stood at the ends of the two crosswalks while the leader stood at the corner where the two crosswalks met. When there were kids wanting to cross a street and traffic seemed open, the leader would blow the whistle and the four flaggers would step a few feet into the traffic lane and present their poles with signs saying “STOP”. The traffic would stop and the kids would cross the street.
I was a flagger; the other members of the team were all boys. This was, after all, 1962.
So one day Peter Connor showed up to bully me. He proceeded to punch and kick at me. I was mindful of my duty as a flagger, so I stood there and took it without attempting to defend myself. I had a job to do and wasn’t going to compromise it. I did not report Peter Connor’s behavior to the nuns, but somebody did so, I think.
On another occasion, we had a little “art” exercise. On Friday we blew up some round balloons, then carefully wrapped colored yarn around them in an intricate pattern. I gave my balloon a lot of thought and devised a good pattern. Then we dipped our balloons into a water-and-starch solution and hung them up to dry.
On Monday we came into class to see the results of our work. The starch had stiffened the yarn and, when we punctured the balloon with a pin, we were left with a colorful round structure. I was impressed with how well mine came out; the geometric interplay of the colors was nice. As I walked out of class at the end of the day, carefully holding my work of art, Peter Connor intercepted me, seized it, and crushed it. The evil sneer on his face was too much for me to handle; I broke into tears and ran.