Decades after being out of school, my heart still aches for one particular girl - Carolyn. I never knew Carolyn because she never spoke to a soul in school. This young girl was the victim of relentless, horrible, taunting all through junior high and high school (and probably before, but I was in seventh grade when we moved to the school district).

Although I was far from being in the "in crowd" (really, really, far), I got through my school years without ever being bullied. I used to think that nobody saw me as a threat, because I was awfully small and young looking as a kid. There were times when I've wondered if the mean kids were too afraid I'd cry if they were mean to me. At other times, I've assumed it was because - even though I could be an underachiever at times - other kids seemed to think I was "one of the smart kids". Of course, even if I wasn't cool back then, I pretty much knew what to wear to keep from standing out. Maybe it was because I knew enough to keep my mouth shut when other kids acted up in class. It has occurred to me that I've always had a kind of quiet confidence that may have kept the bullies at bay. Then again, I've wondered if I appeared to be so lacking in confidence they didn't feel the need to bother me. Either way, I took my place among the "non-descript crowd" - that middle-of-the-road majority, who is neither the so-called, "cream of the crop" nor "outcasts".

Carolyn, on the other hand, was probably the ultimate outcast of the school. She, too, was very young looking, but, I suppose, because she had thick, thick, glasses and extremely crooked teeth that may have been what made the bullies so cruel. I was never sure if she had a health problem or was just extremely thin and frail looking, but I'm guessing she weighed 60 lbs when the other girls were weighing around 80.

When Carolyn would walk into class she would encounter the taunts of several boys in the class. They would call her last name in a certain sing-song way, and she would have to walk past a number of her taunters each and every day, in each and every class. She would be taunted when she got on the bus, taunted when she walked into the cafeteria, and taunted when she walked down the halls. The girls didn't bother Carolyn. It was just the boys, but in high school boys can be as tall as men and have men's voices; so it was particularly horrible to have to watch the tiny, silent, Carolyn walk to her desk to horrible taunts every day. The boys

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