The Bully

Have you ever had an encounter with a  Bully?  When I was a little girl, there was a bully in my neighborhood, but I refused to be his victim.


1953, Warwick, R.I. -- the Bully and his intended victim (me, age 6)

 Doesn't he look like a little old man in a child's body?  I wasn't too happy about him coming over to play on my swing set. My father is in the background keeping an eye on things because he knew Alan LaMake was a Bully. He was abandoned by his parents,( both he and his brother Jackie) and was raised by his grandparents. The other kids would make fun of him and called him "hare-lip", because he was born with a cleft palate and had a scar on his lip. Nobody liked him very much.
In 2nd grade, he took a liking to me. One day at recess, he told me, in a very threatening manner, that if I didn't hold hands with him on the walk home from school, that he'd follow me, throwing rocks on me the whole way. (In the good old days, little kids would walk home from school, usually with others (along a busy highway), with no parents accompanying them-- and it was almost a mile.)
I shouted back at him, "No! I won't hold hands with you!". He trailed me and my little friends all the way home, but not a single rock was thrown. I guess the Bully really liked me, in his own wierd way.