ANGY MODE ACTIVATED

I didn’t notice until earlier this morning. When I went to wash a few of my son’s shirts. The brown one had a large tear at the back of the collar. With the tag dangling from one end.

I recalled what my son told me about his ID badge yesterday after school. How someone pulled at the plastic cover attached to the neck strap, tearing it in the process. That’s when I realised this was another outcome of the first incident of bullying this week.

Immediately, I got ready to go to school to talk with the assistant principal. Or the counselor. Or anybody who would do anything. Last year, nothing was done.

‘They’re all in a meeting’, the front office lady informed me.

‘A magical meeting?!’, I exclaimed. It seems every time I need to talk to someone, the excuse is that they are in a meeting.

She looked at me strangely. ‘No magical meeting.’

I sat in the entrance and waited for a while, but not for too long. I decided that this time we would do things the official way and so I went home to print out the anti-bullying incident form.

Later in the afternoon, my phone rang. Even without my glasses, I could make out the last four numbers of 3700. The school was calling. They must have me on speed dial.

‘I wanted to call and let you know that I got your email… and that there was another incident this afternoon’, started the assistant principal.

Oh great, I thought. What did my son do now? I had already sat in on his Social Studies class on Tuesday to observe the teacher who is known for yelling at everyone. The one who is always angry. The one who reported my son and two of his friends on Monday for an incident in class. The one who dislikes my son and his friends.

The assistant principal went on to inform me that there had been a fight after 7th period. My son got hit in the back of the head by a metal water bottle. He went to the nurse and seemed fine. The assistant principal did not want to disclose who the boy was who did this to my son.

‘Was it…?’, I asked.

‘I can’t tell you that’, she answered. Somehow, I knew it was him.

‘Well, Sage will tell me when he gets home’, I added.

When my son got home, he let me know that not only was he whacked in the back of his head with the water bottle twice after the boy grabbed his hair and held him in a headlock, but that during lunch he was also punched and slapped by the same boy. In the process, my son’s friend’s girlfriend was also hit. An instance of being in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

‘Damn. Angy’, my son exclaimed after the water bottle hit him. The boy definitely has some anger issues. Or as my son and his friends would say, ‘Angy mode activated!’.

There were many witnesses who saw the fight. It initially started with the boy wanting to hit one of the girls my son was walking with. Her friend started yelling back at the boy, asking why he would want to do such a thing. Then my son was attacked.

At this point, I had printed out two more incident reports and had my son write his account of events. All three reports were scanned and emailed to the principal, assistant principal, my son’s counselor, his father, and the school district’s superintendent.

Neither my son nor I believe much will be done. But at least we are trying everything in our power.