When I was mean ...

Three examples of not doing right for the vulnerable

The missing dollar

I went to John Wooden Basketball Camp for the first time when I was 9. I was probably 4-foot-4, and my good friend from elementary school Jeff was probably 5-foot-4. Quite a pair. We stayed in dorm rooms on the Cal Lutheran University campus, with two other roommates.

One of those other kids was named Pat. I remember his name even though I had never seen him before those five days and never saw him again.

I don’t know how it began, but there was some issue with someone in our room losing a dollar. (We were kids, but in those days, you needed some petty cash.) For some reason — and I’m not sure it was a good reason — Pat was targeted as a thief.

Next thing I remember, Jeff started tormenting him and I joined in. What does that mean? The three of us marched in a circle around him, repeating, “The dollar was stolen by Pat, by Pat. The dollar was stolen by Pat. The dollar was stolen by Pat, by Pat. The dollar was stolen by Pat.”

Pat started crying and saying, “I didn’t! I didn’t!”

We didn’t stop.

I wasn’t the instigator, but I knew what I was doing was wrong, very wrong. But I kept doing it until it finally died out. I don’t remember anything about what happened in our room for the rest of the week.

At the end of camp, I was named my team’s John Wooden Special Award Winner for exemplifying the values of the Pyramid of Success.

The movie theater

In the summer between 10th and 11th grade, I got to go on a bike tour in Europe, an incredible opportunity that nevertheless tested me emotionally as much as anything I encountered in high school.

To say I was not popular among many of the other kids is an understatement. I never understood why. They just didn’t like me. I sensed that pretty quickly, though only on the final night did I find out how intense their feelings were.

There was a kid on the trip named Mike whom I think was less popular than me — though in retrospect, the others might have felt just the same about both of us. But one of the few things I could share with the others was an irritation with Mike.

Near the end of the trip, in England, most of the group went to a movie theater to see Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. I had seen it when it first came out and thought it was hilarious, so I was eager to see it again.

Mike fell asleep maybe an hour into the movie. Sound asleep. The credits rolled, and he was still asleep.

Someone had the idea to for the rest of us to take off and leave Mike behind. And we did. I followed right along, even though I didn’t really like these people by now. I was that eager to get along and go along.

Mike found us later that night. He had borne a similar amount of grief as me on that trip, but this time, he couldn’t hide how terribly hurt he was. It was all over his face. I can picture the look now.

The autographs

I think it’s fair for me to share what happened on the final group dinner of the trip.

At the start, we were all given small, bound notebooks, kind of a combination journal and autograph book. The autograph portion was meant to resemble a school yearbook, where your comrades would sign the equivalent of “Have a bitchin’ summer!”

I was so naive.

Not only did I offer my notebook for the others to sign — thinking this would be a bygones, “you’re not so bad” moment — but instead of maintaining control over it, I let the others pass it around among themselves. Remember, I kept a journal in that book, a chronicle of five weeks of pain and rejection.

They read my private words, which they didn’t have to do. They chose to read them. And instead of reacting with sympathy, they doubled down. They wrote, in the autograph portion, the nastiest things to me. They quoted from my journal entries and mocked them. And then they handed the notebook back to me, laughing, knowing full well the impact it would have on me.

I started to look at their signings, and I was staggered. I fled to the men’s room, and I could feel their eyes following me. I could feel their smiles like tire tracks on my raw pain. I sat down on a toilet lid, and I read and read and read.

I’m not sure if I’m remembering this correctly, but I do think Mike wrote something nice.

I left Europe genuinely wondering if my friends at home would still accept me, or if I had changed in some way that rendered me intolerable. Fortunately, I had good friends at home.

The outsider

Nevertheless, there was a guy on the fringe of our friend group during that final year or two in high school. He wasn’t on the same wavelength as the rest of us, even though he clearly wanted to be.

And it was hard, you know? Hard for everyone. We weren’t outwardly mean. But we didn’t really see him as a part of us.

We didn’t really make it easy for him, and that includes me. I didn’t make it easy for him.

Shouldn’t my experience on the bike trip have made me more generous? Or did I need to feel the level of control over my friendships that I didn’t have in Europe?

Easy for me to say now, but I wish I had found a way to be more kind.

To all of those I hurt or might have hurt, I wish I could say directly to you that I’m sorry.

As a parent, I have seen others hurt my kids, and I ask myself how they can be so cruel. But the thing is, I know the answer. I don’t like the answer, but I know it.

We need to direct kindness to others, and for ourselves, we need strength.

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