The Unmuddled Mathematician

Sometimes a Bully Meets Justice

By Chris S. Coray, The Unmuddled Mathematician

In the movie that is played continuously on TV for 24 hours, Christmas day, titled “A Christmas Story”, there are many family experiences that are timeless.   One of the vignettes is about the kid at school who, with his small and obnoxious assistant, bullies and terrifies all the other kids who are physically smaller than he.  This is pretty much everybody.  But in the movie he gets his due.  This is a real story about a similar experience, and it is not meant to be humorous.

My wife and I have two children, both wonderful daughters.  Like all families, there are struggles.  Our eldest daughter Kim had really bad allergies as a toddler which made normal sleep almost impossible.  Too much congestion.  But we had remedies.  Every week I would give my girl a shot which gradually built up her immunity and she got better from the allergy.  However, when she turned 5 and entered school we discovered that she had a lazy eye and was only really seeing out of one.  She never, ever complained.  For two years every morning when she woke up I would put a patch on her good eye and she lived in at best a fuzzy and dim world.  Sometimes I would draw spiders or other stuff on her patch. The memory of watching her as she tried to see the pictures in kid books still tugs at our hearts. 

After two years the lazy eye had gone from essentially blind to 20/60 with correction.  No further progress was possible so to this day that eye is just held in reserve should something happen to the other.  And as for the other eye, the good one which itself was not perfect, the doc suggested that at age 7 we use a new product, a Bausch and Lomb soft contact lens.  This was new science and it was expensive.   Kim had a fluid filled lens case for the contact but while the case was made for two, she had but one lens.  At school she knew she was different and had vision unequal to her classmates.  As always, no complaints ever, no anger.  She just kept on being kind for that is what is in her heart.  Overcoming her difficulties made her more sensitive and gentle, not less. 

Her one lens allowed her to have a mostly normal life.  Games that require depth perception, like tennis or other games with balls were beyond her capacity.  And she had what all kids need, one or two really good friends.  Unfortunately there were a couple of classmates who were just plain mean bullies.  

The school had grades K-6.  One day in the winter when Kim was in the 5^th grade, a  6^th grade male bully who had been tormenting her all year, just to be mean,  grabbed her lens case, which in fact had the soft lens in it getting cleaned, and ran outside, throwing the white lens case into the snow on the school playground.  It could not be found.  Something snapped in Kim.  Whether it was her sense of fair play or a deeper understanding of how mean this action was, she went after her older classmate.  Kim was a thin, strong child and she was upset.  She tackled the older boy and soon was sitting astride him, pounding his face with her mitten covered hands.  While bigger than Kim the boy could not escape and the beating continued.  A strange thing was that there were several teachers out with the kids observing all activity.  They had seen the whole thing and they intentionally did not stop the application of justice.  They let it continue.  Soon the snow was mixed with the bloody nose drops of the bully and only fatigue ended Kim’s pounding of the bully. 

All of this was reported to us second hand.  It is not possible for me to understand why anyone would remove the capacity of another to just plain see and it is a good thing I was not there.   After learning the details that evening I visited the father of the young man in his house, who I believe was at least as upset with his son as I.  He immediately agreed to provide a new contact lens and applied whatever discipline he thought appropriate after I had left his home.  I still smile a little at how a 6^th grade boy must have felt about getting his clock cleaned by a 5^th grade girl.

Today Kim is the CEO and an owner of a company with 350 employees.  Some of the current employees were among those who gave her a hard time throughout the public school years.  She has never rejected a job applicant because of unkind behavior directed at Kim in their school years.  In other words, she forgave in all cases, remains generous to all, especially to those in need, and has joy in her mind and heart.  Her forgiveness helped her grow.