Friends soften the blow

Growing up's a piece of cake as long as you remember a few simple rules:

Don't be gay, don't be overweight or poor. Don't be the new kid, or of a different race or ethnicity. Red hair's a no-no. That's for sure.

If you're a guy, don't be a wimp. If you're a girl, don't have too many boyfriends - or too few. Basically, don't be different in any way, big or small. Then, you'll be fine. That's what local high school students tell me, anyway.

Bullying among teens is on everybody's mind these days, in the middle of a nationwide rash of teen suicides. In all corners of the country, in communities large and small, teens - especially, it seems, gay teens - are choosing to end their lives rather than keep dealing with the bullying.

Today, tens of thousands of people are expected to wear purple to acknowledge those deaths and bring attention to the problem.

More than 150 people are expected to attend a candlelight vigil tonight at Hamburger Mary's in Cedar Rapids, alone.

And that's just a fraction of the number who'll be thinking today about Tyler Clementi, Zach Harrison, Seth Walsh and others - and about all the teens who continue to be bullied because of their sexual orientation or just because they're different.

Where does it come from, this meanness? Most kids today have had more emotional intelligence training than - I'm guessing here - all the world's previous generations combined. They're told to use kind words from the time they utter their first words.

And still, some kids bully and others just sort of watch it happen even though they know it's wrong: “People just want to fit in,” one Cedar Rapids boy told me. “They don't want to fight.”

They stand by as classmates are called “dyke” because they don't have a lot of boyfriends, or “whore” because they do. Stand by as they're relentlessly teased for living in a mobile home, or just because they're new.

“People would throw garbage at me and say ‘Sorry, I thought you were a garbage can,'?” one girl told me about moving to a new middle school in Cedar Rapids.

Most of it's the kind of stupid stuff you can ignore when you've got a good group of friends to support you. But when you feel like you're alone in the world, the effects can be devastating.

That, researchers say, is what makes the biggest difference between a bullied kid who can shrug it off and the kid who can't: The knowledge that somebody - anybody - has got their back.

So if you're being bullied, or know someone who is, look around today: We're with you.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@thegazette.com