- Jasmine McClain, 10, teased her about her clothes or her shoes, found dead in her bedroom
- Jamey Rodemeyer, 14, bullied because of his sexuality, found dead outside his home
- Ashlynn Conner, 10, taunted by girls at school, found hanging by a knitted scarf from the rod in her bedroom closet
- Mitchell Willis, beaten up by a group of his peers, who also stole his iPhone, found dead
- Justin Aaberg, 15, bullied about being gay, found hanging in his room
A five-minute search on the internet turned up these names, children lost because other children bullied them. Could one of them have been the next Mozart? The next Feynman? The next Jobs? We’ll never know.
The pain of being bullied clings to memory like a leech to flesh, as biting in adult life as when it first occurred. Sharing our stories can sometimes lessen the misery. That’s the goal of Bullying Stories, a site dedicated to dealing with bullying from an adult perspective. As explained by the site’s creator, Alan Eisenberg, the goal of the site is to “collect your stories and share in what I believe to be the long term effects that being bullied or being a bully has on us as adults. This isn’t the kids’ perspective, but an adult perspective on how those informative years affect how we are as adults today: our fears, our attitude, and our memories of childhood.”
Today, I’m a guest on Bullying Stories, where I describe my experience with being bullied in fifth grade. Click on over and check it out. Learn what I had in common with Jasmine McClain. And if you have a story to tell, share it there and on this site. Together, perhaps we can force those dark memories to fade into the distant past where they belong.
BULLY AT AMBUSH CORNER 