MEMOIR
When Bullies Become Friends
How I became friends with the person I feared most
Throughout high school, there was a bully named Dean. He wasn’t the typical bully, though. Where so many bullies struggle in school and physically intimidate their peers, Dean was an A student. He was popular and athletic and smart enough to know which words would hurt the most.
Dean lacked a football player’s bravado, but in my district, it wasn’t typically the jocks that rose to the top of the high school hierarchy. Social intelligence seemed to play more of a role in our standings than our status as sports captains. But Dean seemed to have it all. He was a skilled basketball player and honors student and a focal point of seemingly every lunch table he sat at.
Dean and I had mutual friends. At times he even reached out an olive branch to me as well. But each time I felt as though we’d finally become friends, he’d retract his peace offerings in public and humiliating ways. Dean was an effective manipulator. At times, I watched him use less popular kids as pawns. He’d capriciously tell them to do things in order to get a laugh. And wanting to win the good graces of his more popular circles, they often complied. Sometimes I tried to win his favor myself.
