Jump.

Once every five years or so, I re-read Stephen King's The Stand. The first time I read it was in the mid-80's, in high school. It was the first edition, first printed back in the day when King believed in the usefulness of a good editor. Later, he decided that since all five hundred books he'd published all got turned into movies,* he didn't need an editor so much. Which is why today if one of his books fell from the Sears Tower and landed on your head, it would push you down into the earth, into the inner crust. And why he released the "Unabridged" version of The Stand; The Stand: All the Stuff They Made Me Get Rid of the First Time.

This sounds like I'm complaining, but I'm really not, because being the misanthrope that I am, I don't necessarily mind the fantasy of 99% of the population dying off, leaving just me, my kids, and my husband Owen Wilson Steve behind. And think of the fabulous paintings I'd have with the Art Institute abandoned!

But all this talk about The Stand isn't about my own personal dream of everyone dying (I would prefer everyone to catch some sort of disease that makes one painlessly evaporate), instead I want to focus on one of my favorite characters, Harold Lauder. Harold, for those who haven't read the book, is about 17 or 18 years old, and turns evil from unrequited love.** So, spoiler here, things don't work out so well for Harold, who realizes (too late!) that his major problem was suffering from an over-extended adolescence, and that and his ego have been his downfall.

At the very end of Harold's particular part of the story, he's lying in the Utah desert by the side of the highway.

He thought of a game they had played when they were children, a game the others had teased him about because he never quite dared to go through with it. There was a gravel pit out on one of the back roads, and you could jump off the edge and fall a heartstopping distance before hitting the sand, rolling over and over, and finally climbing up to do it all over againAll except Harold. Harold would stand on the lip of the drop and chant, One...Two...Three! just like the others, but the talisman never worked. His legs remained locked. He could not bring himself to jump. And the others sometimes chased him home, shouting at him, calling him Harold the Pansy.

He thought: If I could have brought myself to jump once...just once...I might not be here.

I have two children. Christopher will jump. Alex won't. Last month at the Bolingbrook Water park I sat under an umbrella and watched Christopher play in the big sandpit. The sandpit has a play structure shaped like a pirate ship, with a slide so they can slide down the plank, and a large treasure chest off to the side full of big plastic shovels and pails. Christopher had been playing with some older kids, kids who were 4 or 5 years old, when the group leader decided Chris was so very baby and ordered him away from the group.

"No," said Christopher.

"I said Go!" the older child insisted.

"No!" said Christopher. The child shoved his face up into Christopher's and screamed, "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

"No!" Christopher shouted back.

By this point I was dying to intervene, but I know my son well enough to know it wouldn't have been appreciated. So I hung back and watched, my stomach in knots. The bullying child picked up a shovel.

"If you don't go away, I'm going to hit you in the face with this shovel," he threatened.

Christopher narrowed his eyes and glared menacingly at the kid.

"No." he said. By this time the entire sandpit was watching them, the five-year-old with the shovel, the two-year-old in the swim diaper and rubber pants. His bluff called, the five-year-old backed down, mumbling something about not wanting to play with babies. Christopher stared at him until he turned away, putting the shovel to a more constructive use.

When the fervor had died, I walked over to Christopher as casually as I could and squatted down in front of him.

"Are you okay, baby?" I asked him.

"Go away," he said, so I did. A couple of minutes later, the shovel-wielding child was back, this time currying favor with Christopher. There were no more incidents with bullying.

Where did he get this from? Certainly not me. At two years old, Christopher has the angry fuck-you attitude I still don't have, a willingness to suffer a broken nose from getting smacked with the back of a shovel if it means not losing face. I can't think of a single incident in my early childhood when I had that raw anger necessary to protect myself. Instead, I mistakenly believed if I was nice, and fair, and showed a willingness to get along, bullies would leave me alone. And if worst came to worst, I'd follow the popular advice of teachers and parents and just ignore them.

I have no idea why this advice is so popular. As adults, haven't they figured out that the joy of bullying is bullying itself? Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away. What makes it go away is that willingness to step up to the edge and jump, even if it means getting hurt.

The year I started first grade, my next door neighbor Allie's parents decided their attempts at reconciliation weren't working and decided to call their marriage quits. Allie and her sisters moved to a three-story olive green condominium downtown. This was depressing. Not a day went by when I didn't see her; in fact, she spent more time at my house in the daylight hours than she did at her own. Our mothers allowed us to visit as often as possible, and a few months after her family had moved, her mother dropped her off to play, and within minutes we had picked up where we had left off, in a fight over something stupid.
Normally our fights involved a big dramatic exit on Allie's part, a loud, "Fine! I'm going home!" and she'd stomp out the front door, never ever ever to return until she got bored twenty minutes later. This time, however, she was in a jam. She couldn't walk back to the condo. In fact, they had lived there for so short a time she was probably uncertain of how to even get there.

"I'm going...." she shouted, "I'm going....to...to wait for my mother to come get me!" and she slammed out the front door and sat on our mossy brick steps leading down off the porch. I went out to keep her company, as she had a seven hour wait ahead of her. Even though she was not speaking to me, she seemed to appreciate the company. As we sat in silence, a moving truck pulled up to what was once Allie's house, followed by a white Chevy pickup. Movers piled out of the truck, opened the back, and began unloading sheet-covered furniture and stacking brown cardboard boxes onto handcarts. A man on the driver's side of the Chevy pushed it open with his foot and stepped out. A little girl scrambled out after him.

She was a non-descript looking child, brown hair, glasses in brown plastic frames, blue jeans and a white tee shirt with a red flower on it. She stood on the pebbled driveway, looking at the house and the yard. Her eyes moved to the magnolia tree in the front yard, and by the way her eyes were sizing up the branches toward the top I knew she was a seasoned tree-climber, like me. She swiveled her head to the side yard next to us to look at another, taller tree that straddled the property line, and when she did she saw Allie and me on the steps.

She shot a quick glance at her parents, who were fluttering around the open mouth of the moving truck as it slowly spit out their furniture, and walked shyly over to us.

"I'm Lisa," she said.

"I'm Leigh Anne, and that's Allie. She used to live there."

Allie, possibly saddened by the sight of someone moving into the only home she'd known, said nothing. I thought she was still punishing me, and, irritated by the thought that she was not more appreciative of the fact that a new little girl had moved in to replace her, threw myself whole-heartedly at Lisa. Within minutes, we were rolling around on the grass, mock-wrestling, and giggling like we'd been friends forever. Giggling like Allie and I used to do, until my mother came outside to check on us, read the emotional weather, and put a stop to Allie's exclusion by making us come in for lunch.

"But she's waiting for her mama to come get her," I protested.

"Oh, don't be silly," said my mother. "Go wash your hands and then sit and eat lunch."

I ate my bologna sandwich in a state of excitement. A new friend! Just like the old friend! After Allie goes home, I'll still have a friend!

And that's mostly what happened. In the fall, Lisa would be going to public school, while I'd be attending Aiken Day School (the school in the photo), a tiny private school that had a large leap in enrollment from the mid-50's to the early 70's, from forced bussing through the Civil Rights Act. I loved school. I loved to do classwork, I loved Mrs. Beasley, my kindergarten teacher, I loved the big old converted house. My kindergarten class was taught in a room directly opposite the main staircase, nestled in between the butler's pantry and the ballroom, in what I suspect was once the billiards or men's smoking room. On the other side of the ballroom was the garden room, a room that was windows all around. It was very bright, and, in the spring and early fall, very hot. It wasn't like my kindergarten classroom, whose windows were partially covered with vines of ivy. Kindergarten was darker, cooler, calmer. If you were an uncertain child, as I grew to be, it was easier to hide than in the bright sunshine of first grade, where all your flaws were sure to be noticed and seized on.

I was enthusiastic, yet never quite seemed to be on the ball as quickly as the other girls, and nowhere near as savvy as the most popular trio, Kristi, Suzy, and Mary. Kristi, Suzy, Mary. It was always that way, in that order. When it was your turn for group leader, and you stood by the front door and picked the order of the kids to line up for recess, it was always the same. Every girl was picked first, then every boy. If it was a boy's turn to be group leader, every boy was picked first, then every girl, but even then, the order of the girls were the same. Kristi, Suzy, and Mary went first, The first in the line on girls' days, the first of the girls on boys' days. Everyone knew that's how it was. But how did they do it? How did they achieve such power so quickly? I never knew, and I certainly could never hope for that kind of power myself. Best to have power by proxy, so I picked them first for everything I could: red rover, freeze tag teams, kickball. I picked them even when they made it clear they had no intention of opening the circle to let me in.

I don't remember having any special friends that year, except for Emily, and our friendship came to an end when I found out her family were nudists.**** I discovered this when I went over to her house to play and her older brothers tried to force me out of the one-piece jumpsuit my mother made me. They gave up when they were unable to pry my fingers from around the zipper, deciding instead to block the bedroom doorway and not let me out until I stripped. I escaped by leaping into the dumbwaiter and lowering myself down to the kitchen, where I ran outside and struck a familiar pose of sitting on the front porch steps to wait for my mother to pick me up. I really meant it, though, going so far as to break the kid honor code and call my mother to come pick me up.

As badly as I wanted friends, I didn't want them badly enough to become a nudist. And besides, I had Lisa at home to play with every day.

When I finally started first grade, I discovered the holy trinity had dissolved. Suzy had transferred to public school. I made friends with Sheri and Missy, and Lisa and I discussed our school friends. We were "best home friends," but there were "best school friends" now, too.

One November Saturday, Lisa and I were sitting between the oak trees that framed our house. She was waiting for her best school friend to come over and play. Soon, an Oldsmobile pulled into Lisa's pebbled driveway. A little girl with curly black hair and skinny legs catapulted from the back seat and made a mad dash toward Lisa. Lisa jumped and ran toward the girl. They smashed into each other, shrieking delightedly, then turned to me, arms entwined around each other like Tweedle Dee. I gawked in amazement. It was Suzy. The Great Suzy, best school friends with my best home friend! This was incredible.

Suzy fixed me with a basilisk stare.

"Her," she sniffed. "I hate her."

"Oh, yes," Lisa agreed quickly, "I hate her, too."

This was unpleasant, but not entirely unsuprising. Suzy had an entire year to play with me when we went to Kindergarten, and she never once did it. I didn't even blame Lisa for agreeing with her so readily. In her place I might have done the same thing. However, I don't think I would have taken to it as quickly as she did. And Lisa had a knack for it, at least with me. She knew all my weak spots.

"Your mother is old," she smiled smugly.

My mother! We're breaking out the mother insults already? "No, she isn't," I protested, shocked and hurt. "She's forty."

"Forty!" they howled, "She's a grandmother."

Suzy smiled. "My mother is twenty-six.*5*"

"My mother couldn't be twenty-six. My oldest sister is nineteen."

"Nineteen? Are you an accident?"

"No!"

"You're an accident! You were a mistake! Your mother didn't want you! You should never have been born!"

The day had gone horribly wrong somehow. The more I reasoned with them, trying to justify my family and my very existence, the crueler they became. Finally, they walked away, arm in arm, and left me to stand there in my wretchedness.

Later that day, after I had given up on them coming back and forgiving me for having such an ancient mother, the doorbell rang. It was Lisa. Suzy had gone home, and she was ready to play again. And out I went. I didn't mention my hurt feelings. Maybe it wouldn't happen again. But it did. It happened over and over, every time Suzy came to play. Eventually, it wasn't just when Suzy came over, it was every time Lisa could enlist someone else to gang up on me.

I never got angry. I always stuck it out, no matter what they said or did. I wanted to play. If I gave up and went into the house, it was an admission that nobody wanted to play with me. If I stayed outside, then things might get better. The door was still open. I was still playing.

After a particularly brutal day, which consisted of me in my yard, Lisa and another girl in her yard, yelling and calling me names, my mother intervened and told me to come inside.

I protested, embarrassed. Once the front door was shut, my mother pleaded with me, "Honey, don't let them treat you like that."

"But I want to play."

"Are you having fun?"

"No."

"No. They're not your friends when they act like that. That's not how friends treat each other."

But I didn't understand. I just wanted to play, and I was convinced that if I just stuck it out, things would get better. I wanted so badly to have friends and have fun, that I was willing to be absolutely miserable for a shot at it.

I wish I could say I learned my lesson eventually with Lisa and kicked her to the curb, but I never did. I continued to let bullies pick on me until I was twenty-eight and pregnant with Alex. It was pregnancy that gave me the inner strength to ruthlessly cut from my life all the people I found to be toxic, and it's parenthood that keeps that desire strong in me. But I can't believe it took me twenty-eight years to learn what Christopher knows at the age of two: that you don't pander to a bully, and that if it means taking a shovel in the face to keep your dignity intact, then it's worth it. I cringed from getting hurt, and took one metaphorical shovel in the face after another. Christopher only had to stand up the one time, and he had kids twice his size giving him props. I'm not worried about Christopher.

Alex is like me. He just wants to play. He puts up with abuse, with bullying, with insults. He tolerates it with relentless good cheer, just hoping he can change things by his good spirit and enthusiasm. He's so very wrong. I know he's wrong, and I can't convince him. I lived through the life he's living right now, and I can't help him. I know how badly it hurts him to have his love rejected, his friendship held in contempt, when all he wants to do is play.

I sit with my face in my hands sobbing, because nothing I say to him works. I say what my mother said, that they're not worth it, that I love him so much, that he's such a great kid, that he deserves good friends, but he doesn't see it. He's so sure that if he just keeps playing, everything will work out. So he tells them he wants to play, that he loves them, that he wants to be friends, and bang! in the face with the shovel again. How can I tell him what I know when he doesn't want to hear it? I'm in first grade all over again, and I've forgotten how badly it hurts. And I cry and cry for my sweet baby, who tries so hard. He's willing to do everything to make a friend but be indifferent to friendship. And sometimes, that's what it takes.

I hope he doesn't turn out like me. I hope, when he's still a child, that he gets up the courage to jump, just once. It might make all the difference.
____________________
*except for my favorite, Rose Madder, of course. Stephen King has a tendency to regress to the age of thirteen when he's writing about women, which always make the feminist in me roll my eyes so far back in my head I can see my brain. Strangely enough, Rose Madder is a book about feminists working in a domestic violence shelter, and he pretty much nails it, making them neither angels or devils, but real women working to help other women, so I know he knows how to write with a feminist perspective. Why doesn't he? Because of all five hundred books written by Stephen King, the one with openly feminist heroes was the only one not made into a movie.

**Which is silly when I put it like that, but I'm trying to save you from having to read all 1152 pages of King's prose. Just bear with me.

***Just for shits and grins, let's look at some other private schools in the area. Here's Aiken Prep, the boy counterpart to Aiken Day. Aiken Prep started at fourth grade, which is why Aiken Day allowed boys, but only up to third grade:



Here's another girls' school. This one burnt down in 1944, everything but the gym, which eventually was turned into a local private swim club:



These were schools built for the children of the "winter people," rich Yankees who lived in Aiken during the winter and trained thoroughbred horses for Belmont and the Derby. For contrast, let's look at the local "colored" school:



This concludes today's Southern History Moment. Thank you, and good night.

****When my mother called to complain to her mother about the boys, "We're nudists" was the explanation she received. I suppose I was lucky. It was 1974 after all, and they could have been into key parties.

*5* For my younger readers, 26 was an average age for the mother of a first or second grader back in the early seventies. It seems ridiculously young now to think of women getting married at 19 and having a baby at 20, but most of them did. To have a baby at 35 like my mother did was considered freakishly weird.