Bullying is no laughing matter

Gracie was bullied at school. Bullying is no laughing matter.

According to our little victim, the crime started out innocently enough on the playground at recess, where a "flicking war" transpired between her and a few boys. Apparently the flicking was all in fun (gentle) at first, but then the boys got carried away and kind of ganged up on her. I won't give you a play-by-play of the entire event, but in the end six boys got in trouble for bullying, pushing, bystanding (not acceptable in 2011) and taunting. Gracie shed some tears at recess but promptly recovered and even forgot to tell me about it by the time she got home from school.

I learned about the incident when our doorbell rang early that evening. One of the boys, whom I will call "Johnny" (because my blog is so widely read, right?) and his mom were standing at our door looking quite grim. Surprised, I invited them in and Johnny delivered a sincere, if pained, apology to Gracie, and then handed her a full-page letter. Gracie, for her part, looked animated and pleased to have a buddy over. And that's the thing - they are buddies. Johnny is actually one of my favorite fourth grade boys. So how did he come to pick on Gracie at recess?

Well, it was the bad influence of the Gummy Bear Squad, obviously.

Yes. The notorious Gummy Bear Squad. They're right up there with the Sharks, Jets, Bloods and Crips.

I have to admit, I wasn't previously familiar with "the squad," but in his heartfelt letter, Johnny rued his involvement with them:

I'm sure I will not do it again. I am not going to be in the squad. I will ask Tyler to quit the gummy bear squad. I'm pretty sure your pretty mad and scared...

It's hard not to smile. I'm picturing a line of fourth grade boys with leather jackets, slicked-back hair, snapping fingers and...

(Ethan suggested that the members of the Gummy Bear Squad were bad seeds who got booted out of the Lollipop Guild).

But we suppress our mirth - and the urge, after reading the letter ("Right then I was being a mean bully. I am ashamed about the very bad choice I made") to exclaim, hand on heart, "Oh, Johnny is such a sweetie!" I don't want to suggest that bullying is cute or funny - it's easy to chuckle at the childishness of the "gang," who I suspect were being too aggressive, rather than malicious, because Gracie was pretty unphased by the whole deal. But I meant what I said before: bullying is no laughing matter.

Unless, of course, the perpetrators are in the notorious Gummy Bear Squad.

FLU (but hey, who's complaining?)

It seems that complaining about 2010, even in the sort of guilty way that I did, has come back to bite me in the butt. Now, I’m not Hindu, Buddhist or any of the other karma-espousing Indian faiths, but I do sometimes have the sneaking suspicion that whining about life’s hiccups when you’ve actually got it better than most of the rest of the world is a bad idea. Of course, that’s usually not enough to stop me. I’m a natural venter.

Since my “2010 is going to kick 2011’s butt” post, we have totaled one of our vehicles and four of us have contracted influenza. The good news is that no one was injured in the car accident, and we have access to plenty of fever-fighting drugs. {Positive, positive, positive. Happy, happy, happy.}

Randy and Gracie were in the van when a driver in front of them lost control and did some exciting bumper car-type spins and guard rail bangs before thumping to a stop directly in front of our vehicle. Randy had no chance to avoid hitting her. It was scary – terrifying for Gracie – but no one was hurt. Except for Ol’ Squeaky, my most-favorite-but-admittedly-old-and-clunky van. She’s totaled.

We haven’t had much of a chance to start pondering a replacement vehicle, because the excitement of the mini-van accident was overshadowed by the next big drama: influenza. (I don’t mean “stomach flu”; I’m talking Flu-Shot flu). The same day Squeaky crashed, Ethan got sick with the flu. And sicker. And sicker - on the third day he was running a fever of nearly 103. I caught it next, and Abby and Gracie followed. We probably wouldn’t have suspected influenza, since we all got the flu shot back in October, but because of my work editing infectious disease information, I happen to know the symptoms of influenza in an intimate, geeky sort of way. I recognized every one of our symptoms from the bulleted list on my bookmarked CDC webpage. Hmm… Gracie got “swabbed” over the weekend and the test confirmed it: we’d managed to get THE FLU. It seems that a strain not covered by the vaccine found our family.

I won’t depress you with too many details about our suffering except to say if you don’t get the flu shot you’re crazy – unless you’re allergic or have some other good reason. Here are a few highlights for those on the fence: a full week of school missed; teenagers with fevers over 102 even with ibuprofen; the necessity of keeping a chart of fever-reducing drug dosages and times on the kitchen counter; headaches so bad you can’t move your eyes from side to side; and a cough that interrupts every really important thought I attempt to voice. Influenza literally knocks you down for a full week. Besides school and work, we missed sports, religion, Girl Scouts and exercising, and had to postpone a birthday party and cancel our Superbowl gathering. We did feebly cheer for the Packers from the couch – except for Mira, who has managed to escape this creeping crud so far, despite her best efforts. (Part of the "fun" of the past week has been mostly-unsuccessful attempts on our part to prevent Mira from directly ingesting Influenza A germs. In the span of three days she has emptied water glasses from the nightstands of every sick person in the house, put contaminated thermometers in her mouth, and picked used Kleenex out of the wastebasket to wipe her nose and mouth. If she doesn't get sick she's a pint-sized medical mystery. In my defense, I've been withering around the house with Fever n' Ague ala Little House on the Prairie all week. I can only stay on top Mrs. Busy so much. But I digress...)

Not that I'm complaining about any of this, of course (!) Most of us are on the mend now, and hopefully we’ll never experience influenza again.

As far as replacing Squeaky… if we wait long enough, I'm pretty sure we’ll find a new Lexus in the driveway with a big bow on it. We've seen it happen on TV a ton so it's obviously real. Any day now.