Dear Bully

Bullying is a horrible thing. It sticks with you forever. It poisons you. But only if you let it. See, there’s a secret that no one ever tells you when they’re filling your head that this “will build character” or just completely go away when you’re an adult. You have the power to decide what hurts you and what doesn’t, what sticks with you, and what you use as fuel to pull yourself out of the muck. You can make the needed change in your life and give yourself happiness and joy, despite what the bullies have tried to instill in you. You can succeed at anything, at everything. But you can’t let them see you cry. Instead, when they want to see those tears, when they’re doing everything possible to break you down, I want you to smile and remember that they’re just picking on you because they wish they were just like you, but they don’t have the guts.

Remember that, minion, because everyone deserves a happy ending.

Except, maybe, for Greg.

The Funny Guy

by R.L. Stine

In elementary school, I was a funny guy.

I loved to interrupt the teacher, crack a joke, and make everyone laugh. I spent most of my time trying to make my friends laugh. I watched comedians on TV and memorized what they said. I thought I was a comedian, too.

I loved jokes that were a little insulting:

“Is that your face, or did you forget to take out the garbage?”

“Why don’t you turn your teeth around and bite yourself?”

“Ten? Is that your age or your IQ?”

Some kids laughed at my jokes. Some kids just thought I was weird.

My parents were always telling me to “be serious.” But that didn’t stop me from hanging carrots from my nose at the dinner table and crying, “Look! I’m a walrus!”

There were three guys in my fourth-grade class who didn’t think I was funny at all. They gave me a lot of trouble. It was like a war between us.

Well . . . it wasn’t much of a war. You know the way a cat will torture a mouse before killing it? That’s more the way it was. I was the mouse, of course.

Their names were Pete, Ronnie, and McKay. Pete was the biggest, the meanest, and the leader. He lived a few houses down from mine.

There were always signs in his front yard to elect his father as town sheriff. I thought the first criminal his father should arrest was Pete. Pete was only nine—like me—but he was already a really bad dude.

Ronnie was a skinny weasel of a kid. He wasn’t too bright. He did whatever Pete said.

McKay was the smart one. He was always giving me embarrassed looks. Like he was sorry about what the three of them were doing to me.

The problem I had with these three guys started by accident. I bumped into Pete in the lunch line one day, and I made him spill macaroni on his T-shirt.

If only I’d kept my big mouth shut. But I had to be funny. I said, “Are you going to eat that or wear it?”

He didn’t laugh at my joke. In fact, I think he growled. He took a gob of macaroni and slapped it onto my forehead.

“Needs more cheese,” I said.

Why didn’t I shut up?

After school, Pete, Ronnie, and McKay were waiting for me at the bus stop. I tried to squeeze past them and climb onto the bus. But Pete stuck his foot out and tripped me.

My lunch box hit the sidewalk hard, and I fell on top of it.

The three guys had big grins on their faces as I scrambled onto the bus. Later, I took my thermos out of the lunch box, and it made a jingly sound. The glass inside had broken into chunks.

The war had begun.

Pete and his buddies never did anything to me at school. I was safe there because they didn’t want to get in trouble.

After school was when they made my life miserable. I took the bus home every afternoon. It was about a fifteen-minute ride. And every afternoon when I got off the bus, the three of them were waiting for me.

At first, they just chased me. My house was two blocks from the bus stop. They chased after me, waving their fists and calling me “Chicken” and other names. I never ran so fast in my life.

After a while, they got bored with just chasing me. So they started chasing me and then knocking me down. They’d shove me to the ground and run off laughing.

Getting knocked down every day was no fun. But I didn’t tell my parents. I knew my parents would call their parents. Or call the school. And then Pete, Ronnie, and McKay would become even bigger enemies.

Soon, they began to chase me, punch me a few times, then knock me down. It was getting bad. I had such a terrible feeling of total panic every afternoon.

Of course, at the age of nine, I had no way of knowing how much that dreadful feeling of panic would help me in later life. These days, when I sit down to write a scary book, I can think back . . . remember that feeling of terror . . . and use that feeling in my stories.

I felt helpless. I couldn’t tell my parents. And I couldn’t fight back. I was outnumbered three to one, and they were tougher than me.

It had to end sometime. And it did on a gray, chilly October evening.