The Lord Looketh Upon The Heart...

Morgan is my only bus rider.  Brayden and Quincey drive together.  Allie rides her bike.  Here in St. George, the high school and Junior High school kids ride the same bus at the same time.  And for the life of me, I cannot figure out why anyone thought this is an okay thing.  I am not an educator, but even I know that this is a recipe for disaster.  At the risk of going off topic, I as a parent of a Junior Higher am not happy with this arrangement.  Not in the slightest.   The following story will serve as a valid reason why….

My poor Morgan.  Sensitivity is #7 or #9 on her list of top 10 qualities.  So, when something moves her to tears, I perk up and listen because I know it’s bad if it’s affected her.

She comes to me at 9:30pm and tells me the story of Michael.  He’s an 8^th grader like her.  He’s a little “round” (in her words).  He has a “round face” that is covered in freckles.  His face is cute, his countenance is kind and his demeanor is sweet.  But he is round, so he must be destroyed.  Michael made the ghastly mistake of sitting on the back row of the bus.  And he happily rode along with a pleasant smile, playing a game on his phone and was fine....... until the High School kids boarded.

A big kid got on and headed immediately to the back.  He walked with authority and had an obvious agenda.  He walked up to Michael and towered over him with intimidating anger and totally unprovoked screams at Michael  “Yo Fatso!!  You’re in my seat.  Get your fat A** out of my seat right now before I kick you in your fat A**.  And DON”T ever sit here again.”  And he kicked the seat with such force, it shook the bus.  He was joined right behind by a loud mouth girl who chimed in with “Who the F is this kid?  Who the F does he think he is?”

Michael was immediately terrified and stood up to move with a panicked look in his eyes.  But every seat was filled and the kids were chatting wildly and no one even knew he desperately needed a seat somewhere else.   No one offered to rescue him.  The bus driver, who was of course clueless as to what was happening on her bus, yells at him to “SIT DOWN NOW!!!”  He looked this way and that and was I’m sure pondering the emergency exit, but had no choice but to sit back down, squished between these two bullies and opened himself up to 20 minutes of complete and utter abuse.  They tortured him relentlessly.  He looked at the ground the entire time and his hands were clenched together as if he were praying for help. 

Morgan was staring straight ahead, listening to them go on and on.  Attacking his every physical feature.  Belittling him.  Degrading him.  Threatening him.  She heard every ugly word and she was getting more and more enraged.  She, my 30 year old in a 13 year old body, was the perfect person to be sitting on the next to the last row.  Finally, she could bear it no longer.  She had pondered the risk of the increased embarrassment she could heap on Michael for speaking up, but she could no longer contain herself.  She wheeled herself around and looked that kid right in the eye and said…  “STOP IT!!!  Shut your ugly mouth!!  He didn’t do anything to you.  Your name isn’t on this seat, you don’t own this bus.  He hasn’t done anything to deserve this.  He has just as much right to sit here as you do.”

And the bully says… “he’s fat.”  And Morgan says  “And you’re face is covered in sick pimples.  You don’t wash your face, you’re gross.   And he says  “shut up little girl”  and she says  “Make me, Pizza Face.  Why are you riding the bus anyway?  Aren’t you like a senior?  Why don’t you have a license or a car?  You are PATHETIC!!”

She was shaking!!  Because he really could hurt her.  But, to her astonishment, he stopped talking to her and started talking to his friend, using the F word about his math teacher.  And how he was going to cause all kinds of turmoil in his class on Monday.

Morgan worried all night long if she had made Michael feel worse by standing up for him.  A girl defended him while he sat there paralyzed- how humiliating.  She cried and cried because she knows this happens everyday.  She thinks it happened to her brother a couple of times when he was younger and her heart was broken.  She knows that the majority of kids just go home and keep it to themselves and don’t tell their parents and certainly don’t report it to the school.  She knows that these interactions shape who they are and how they feel about themselves.  She knows it causes them to question their abilities, keeps them from being great and in some cases causes catastrophic results. 

As a parent, you could almost curl up and bawl thinking that some stupid kid could destroy one of your children with one day of ugliness.  Your sweet child, with physical flaws that maybe you gave them, beyond their control.  Beyond your control.  Through no fault of theirs or yours they may have thick ankles, or red hair, or crooked teeth or a big nose, or no boobs or a big head or big ears and someone (who no doubt, has their own set of inherited flaws) thinks it is their duty to punish them. 

I am beyond myself tonight wanting to protect my kids from these “people.”

But how can I?  I can’t be with all of them, at all times, in all places.  The only choice I have is to let them know that I love them.  Their Dad loves them.  That Nana and Papa love them.  And our Heavenly Father loves them.  And we think they are perfect just the way they are.  We see beyond the physical.  We know their spirits.  We know who they really are.  We will love them to the moon and back, every day, no matter what.  We, like the Lord looketh upon their hearts.  And we tell them these things and then we hope and pray every night they believe us and somehow escape being the victims of some pathetic, loser on a bus.

How can the administration of these schools not see that this is going to happen on every bus at every school.  These big kids torturing the little defenseless ones with no one there to protect them.  Ughhhhhh….

Oh, how my heart is aching for Sweet, Michael.  I am so grateful that Morgan saw him through different eyes. And wasn't afraid to show him.  I hope he could feel her concern for him.   I hope someone is holding him tight tonight.