Bullied But Not Buried

I was bullied as a child. I grew up in the tiny town of Carthage, Illinois, and went to a small school where everyone knew your business. I was the fat, shy kid with a mole on my face, so it was pretty much a given I’d be bullied. I had “chocolate” (or, as I became older, “shit”) on my face, I was fat as a boat.

Other than a few friends, I pretty much kept to myself and tried hard not to be noticed. The fact that I was also being bullied at home, by an alcoholic, abusive, policeman father, didn’t help matters. (Neither did my narcissistic mother, but that’s a story for another day.)

Joe as a very young child

School should have been my escape, my refuge from a terrible home life, but it was not to be. One of my first memories of 1st grade was of another boy twisting my arm so hard behind my back that I threw up. After that, I played with the girls, when they’d have me.

In 2nd grade, my father came to the school, drunk, looking for me. Fortunately, my mother got there first, and we hid in a closet until he left. I never did find out why he did this. Maybe he was going to kill me, maybe he wanted to take me out to lunch. (I wrote a short story about this, a thinly-veiled fictional account of my life, coupled with supernatural elements that didn’t actually happen, entitled Haunted.) That whole incident, which the other kids were of course privy to, didn’t help my popularity. To say…