I picked up one of those quick read magazines today, my interest piqued by the photograph of a young girl, who will never grow old. Phoebe Prince. She was bullied to death. Beautiful. Irish transplant. The glory of life before her. And now, nothing. Because other teenagers could not, would not curb that kernel of evil within all of us. After being taunted, publicly, over and over again and called words that teenagers should not even know (and didn't know in days gone by), she went to her mother's rented home and hung herself.
The idea of it is baleful. The authorities are prosecuting, this the new way to deal with behavior that should be within the purview of parent and social anathema before the destruction, not legalism after, too late.
Suddenly, a poem, I think by Edna St. Vincent Millay, suddenly and somewhat comes to mind. "I understand, I do not approve, and I am not resigned". But is it something to be understood, the drive by the still unformed human being to kill the soul of another, to isolate, to cast off?
Do you know what that young girl felt? I think you do, if ever you were bullied, as I suspect so many of you were. I was. And I remember as if it were yesterday the feeling.
I was also about 15, the same age as this late child. My best neigborhood friend, Fern, was going to go to a day summer camp. And she wanted me to come too. The only thing I did not count on was that, she being a year younger, we'd be placed into different groups. I hardly, if ever, saw Fern that summer.
What was it about me they did not like? I still don't know. I was in the full throes of pubescent transformation into something but not quite yet a woman. I was never one of the pretty ones. Not fat at that point, but definitely not skinny. Was that it? I did not smoke, and the girls smoked like chimneys. My not joining might have seemed rather uppity. I did have a tendency to disapprove of violations of rules. Given my line of work for the last 25 years, that apparently hasn't changed much. But then, I did not have the tools to deal with the infliction of utter abrogation. They excommunicated me. Literally. No one talked to me, even if I were in a group with them. Oh, there was one girl, who came after the season started. She liked me, at first. She was the relative of the art counselor. I thought, "No problem. One person. That's enough". But the word went down. "Don't talk to her." And she stopped. Some people's personal items were placed in my locker and then I was accused of stealing. I demurred. Nothing happened to me; I guess there wasn't enough actualy evidence, despite the plant. I was not fired as a camper, except that one counselor was convinced I was the culprit and sided with the girls.
I told my parents. They said I could leave there if I wanted. But something seemed so awful about what they were doing that I could not let them win by getting rid of me. I look back now and think what an idiot I was. I was going to make them see they were wrong. As if that were the issue, right or wrong. Well, I guess it was, but only to me.
I know what that girl felt. The girl who used to have bright eyes and a bright future. I do, although for me it was only eight weeks, not months as it was for Phoebe. I feel it now. An anger so deep, so raw, that was trapped inside her. She couldn't let them see it, because, if they did, it would only get worse. It would mean they were getting to her. As they were. She could beg them to stop, but that too was only fuel. The more pain they saw; the more they would seek to cause. Lies. Taunts. With laughter and smug smiles. I have often thought that such behavior is truly the incarnation of the devil.
There was no place for Phoebe to go. No one to understand. No one probably even to believe. Maybe she thought, "I deserve it." The impulse of escape was the impulse to kill, herself if she could not stop them.
God rest her soul. There but for the Grace of that same God go I. Go you. Remember her. If you pray, pray for her. And, if you have more virtue than I do, pray for those nine teenagers who killed her with unrelenting cruelty.
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