Have you ever been Bullied? Part one of three parts

I have.  Let me start this by saying that I went to a pretty sheltered, mostly white elementary school in Dallas, TX in the late 1960's to early 1970's.  We had a few Hispanic kids in the school, but not many and when I was in the 6th grade, some black students were bused to our school for the first time.  I had one African American girl in my class.  Her name was also Sharon and she was as sweet as she could be. 

My Junior High School was not sheltered.  It was large, seemed crowed and full of mean students of all ethnicity's.  This is where I was bullied.  I have no idea why I was bullied.  One girl, in particular, did not like me.  She was built like a solid Mack truck and was at least a foot taller than me.  She could have played linebacker for our football team!  She would take my seat in math class, try to block me from getting into class, push me, you name it.  She even wrote "bitch" in my jacket one day while it was on the back of my chair.  I'll admit that I didn't know how to handle this.  I didn't tell my mother about it.  (reading this now may be her first time hearing about it)  What I did was I started getting sick before school.  I missed a lot of school in the years I went to that school.  So much, that a Truant Officer visited my home one day.  It didn't matter.  I would feel horrible at the thought of school and I didn't go often.  Fortunately for me, it was before the days of having to attend a set number of days or your would fail.  Well, one day I decided that I had had enough.  It was clear that my teacher was afraid of her and wasn't going to do a thing to help me.  He had seen her behavior and never stopped her or even said anything to her.  I figured I could either stand up for myself or get beat up for trying.  So, when she tried to block my way that day, I pushed her back and glared up at her.  She looked down at me for a moment and then smiled!  At that moment, she became somewhat of a friend.  She even gave me one of her school photos that year and she stopped bullying me that day. 

I had trouble once in a while with a couple of girls in high school too.  Mostly because I had dated one of their former boyfriends and she had decided that I had broken them up.  They went so far as to spread rumors that my best friend and I were lesbians.  As surprising as this may sound, at the time, I never heard the rumors myself.  I was totally unaware of them until my 10 year High School Reunion.  When that same best friend and I went to the reunion together because our husbands did not want to go with us.  There came a time during the reunion when many of the women were up dancing together because there were more women there than men.  I tried to get my friend to get up and dance with me.  She refused because of the old rumors.  That's when I found out about them.  I thought it was funny.  She was still upset about it.