I feel like I’ve been writing so many articles about disappointing or disconcerting events in recent months that when I came across an amazing story from a random high school in Arizona, USA, I felt like it was necessary for me to write about this. The main character of this story is Chy Johnson, a sixteen year old girl with a brain disorder. The setting is Queen Creek high school, where she was an immediate — not to mention easy — target for bullying. But the story has a happy ending, which is why I’m so excited to tell it.
The undefeated Queen Creek football team is lead by star quarterback Carson Jones. Not only is the team undefeated, but the players are skilled, nice, and good looking. In high school, this gives you a prestigious title: cool. And when you’re cool, you’re untouchable. And one thing we know about Johnson — she was not “cool.”
She had been bullied daily when she came, and even had trash thrown at her by other students. The relentless bullying fed up her mother so much that they reached out to the only person she had any (albeit indirect) connection with at the school. It so happened to be Jones.
All the mother wanted was the names of bullies (not sure why), but Jones did even better. Instead of passing off a few names to the victim’s mother, he did what they only do in the movies. He ate lunch with her the next day. In fact, he ate lunch with her every day since then. But it wasn’t just him, it was the entire football team.
That’s right, the entire Queen Creek football team turned a bullied kid into a girl who not only fits in… but who fits in with the coolest boys in school. They protected her whenever she walked in the hallways at school, and they became real friends — not just temporary bodyguards.
Now, Johnson never misses a football game; and the humble players are happy to have helped her. “It feels good to know that we helped someone else,” one of the football players said, “because you know, we’re doing good — everything for us is going well — but someone else needs to feel good, too.”
As you can imagine, Johnson does not get bullied anymore. Obviously the cowardly idiots that picked on her before have realized the pointlessness of tormenting this poor girl.
If only more bullying ended like this, there would be more people who never get into it in the first place. The world would certainly be a better, less miserable, place.
