Garrett-EricY

Garrett By Eric Young

In the fourth grade there was a kid named Garrett. He was and still is extremely overweight. I didn’t like him that much because he was a wimp. He tried to be nice to people but he went a little over the top. I got a seat assigned to me that was right next to him. I called him, “Gear Bear”. After a few weeks he started to put all of his trash on my desk and in my desk. Now that the name-calling had been going on for a couple of weeks everybody and in the class was in on it. Even my friends would call him names and run their shoulders into him in the hallway. He became the laughing stock of the whole school. He couldn’t go through one day without being called names. I had stopped calling him names but one day he put his 3-granola bar wrappers in my desk. We were writing story problems in math so I made one up about Garrett. I still remember it. Garrett has 20 donuts every morning. One day he was very hungry so he ordered 5 times the original amount of donuts. How many donuts is Garrett going to eat? Everybody laughed and Garrett cried. The teacher said it was just a story problem. She didn’t get mad at me.

I lay off Garrett. I didn’t say a word to him. Still people continued to call him names. He had only a few friends. At recess he would throw the ball around with his friend, Monish. People laughed at him because he had no athleticism. At least they didn’t make fun of him. People would come in and take his ball and wouldn’t give it back to him until he threatened to tell the teacher. Sometimes he would yell like a hyena when people were being mean to him. Now he tries to just run over people but he is too slow.

I had stopped completely calling Garrett names. I didn’t bother him and he didn’t bother me. I had told my friends to stop but they wouldn’t. I knew if I kept it up I would soon get in a lot of trouble. Garrett is now at Rocky Heights and I still see him in the hallways and at lunch. He even rides my bus he is still one of the most picked on people in the whole sixth grade. I don’t even say anything to him anymore, I just see him. I realize now that I should not have made fun of him because of his weight and other things. I actually feel sorry for him. Even though I had stopped being mean I knew I could stand up for him. I didn’t. I hope one day he will stand up for himself. Then maybe people would leave him alone.

I don’t feel guilty all the time but whenever I see him getting bullied I fell really bad about it. I don’t know if I started it but if I knew back then that people would be so mean, I would have stood up to the people that made fun of him.