Tripping up bullies in school and in life

D E Larsen DVM

Coos County’s Broadbent School in the fall of 1952 had grown to its largest enrollment ever with nearly 80 students in eight grades. 

The school board had discovered that the upper part of Catching Creek was in the Broadbent district rather than Myrtle Point. That year, they started busing those kids to Broadbent. It meant a long bus ride, but more students for the school.

Tommy, a small blonde first-grader, was one of those upper Catching Creek kids. As a third-grader, I watched over my smaller schoolmate somewhat.

“David, that other David in your class has been picking on me,” Tommy told me one afternoon as we waited for the bigger kids to get out of class so the buses could take everyone home.

“What is he doing to you?” I asked.

“He pushes me every time he walks past me,” Tommy replied. “And he says he will beat me up if I tell the teacher.”

“My dad says that you have to stand up to a bully, or he will just keep pestering you,” I said.

“Yeah, but David is scary,” Tommy said. “He almost acts like a wild man.”

The other David was a special case. During my first two years, he and his two sisters were homeschooled. They lived at the top of Dement Creek, almost over the hill where the Dement, Flores and Catching creeks all started. They had no neighbors. During that time, the family would come to school for testing to make sure they were learning what was expected. 

David was a holy terror during those visits. My mother tried to say he just didn’t know how to play with other kids. I thought he was crazy.

Starting in the third grade, David and his two sisters came to school full time. And it was a constant battle between David and the other three or four boys in the class.

“Let’s figure out how you can get him,” I said.

“He always waits in the hall when we are out of class,” our schoolmate Roy said. “He waits there for his sisters to get out of school.”

“I bet we could have Tommy hide behind the door while we stand out in the playground and make fun of David,” I said. “He will get mad and come running at us with fists in the air.”

“Yeah,” Tommy said. “And when he comes out the door, I could trip him, and he will fall down the stairs.”

“He is probably waiting in the hall right now,” I said. “Let’s just do it now. It will teach him a good lesson.”

We positioned Tommy behind the closed half of the double doors leading into the school’s main hall. In good weather, the other half were always open. 

Roy and I stood out in the school playground where we could see David in the hallway. We started hollering names at him. Sure enough, he came running at us, full steam ahead.

The plan worked so much better than any of us expected. One would have thought it had been conceived by Army generals. David came running out the door, going as fast as he could. Little Tommy stuck his foot out and tripped him. David fell, head over heels, down the five concrete steps in front of the school. 

We were probably lucky he wasn’t seriously injured. Tommy sort of pranced by David as he got up, looking at scrapes on both of his elbows. 

We laughed and patted Tommy on the back and went over to the swings. David got up and went back into the hall to wait for his sisters. He never said a word.

For the rest of the time David was at school, he was never a problem, not for us and not for Tommy. At the end of our fourth-grade year, David and his two sisters moved to Texas. 

Tommy and I, and many of the other kids who saw the event, learned a valuable lesson that day. If you ignore the actions of a bully, you just enable him to continue his abuse. In the end, you live with constant fear of what he will do next. There comes a time you must stand up and trip him up the best that you can.

Lessons learned in elementary school often have applications to later, more serious, events in one’s life.

– David Larsen is a retired veterinarian who practiced 40 years in Sweet Home. More of his stories are available on his blog at docsmemoirs.com.

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