“Weebles Wobble But They Don’t Fall Down!”

I went to a junior high school from the Fall of 1975 through the Spring of 1978. I wish I could tell you I have good memories of junior high, but that simply isn’t true. I was (am) disabled, and grew-up in a small town in Michigan, where all of my classmates accepted and befriended me. When we moved to Virginia the summer before 7th grade, I was very scared of starting a new school and meeting all new people. I had no idea what laid in-store for me.

If you knew me back then, my name was Janice, and I had (and still have) a strange way of walking that resembles a duck waddling, or a person wobbling from side-to-side. It was because of a skeletal abnormality. My pelvis and hip joints never formed properly, which left me unable to walk as a toddler. I had bilateral hip dysplasia that was so severe I got a hernia the first time I tried to walk.

I spent most of my preschool years in and out of hospitals. I had always known I had this disability, and had gone through twelve very painful surgeries and almost 3 years in body casts, so that I could walk. I didn’t walk like other people, but at least I could walk. I knew this, but didn’t consider myself any different from anyone else.

Where I grew up, no one ever treated me as different. When we’d play kickball at school, I’d kick the ball, and then one of the other kids would run the bases for me. I never had to ask – we all just knew. When we’d run races, the other kids would give me a head-start, so I could do it too. I was friends with everyone. They were friends with me. And I was always included.

Then we moved in 1975 and I started 7th grade at a new junior high school. The cruelty and bullying that was aimed at me was beyond anything I could have imagined. Because of my disability, I was teased, called names, pushed over, had rocks thrown at me, and was taunted on a daily basis. I was beaten up in the hallway leading to the girls locker-room more times than I can say. (There were no other classes in that hallway, which meant there were no teachers around.)

I had never experienced any of this prior to coming to Virginia. I had no idea how to react or respond to it. I came home every day in tears. I begged my parents not to make me go to school every single morning. Before coming to Virginia, I had loved school. Now, the only thing I wanted was to be invisible.

Some of the “cool kids” decided to nickname me “Weeble Wobble” and they would hum or sing the song from the commerical – “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down!” as I walked down the hallway. A favorite thing they liked to do was get on each side of me in the hallway, and slam into me from the side, to see if they could make “the weeble” fall down. Sometimes, they would just knock the books out of my arms, but more often, they would completely knock me over, and I’d have to struggle to get up and gather my books, while people stepped over and around me. This happened daily.

I had a really hard time walking, so I’d fall sometimes in gym class, especially if the sport required that I run. I couldn’t really run, so I’d just walk as fast as I possibly could. When I fell, the other kids would just laugh at me as I struggled to get back up. When we picked teams, I was always picked last, and there were often comments like “do we have to have her on our team? She’s a loser!” The gym teacher never said a word to them about their behavior.

I hated dressing-out for gym class, because it meant changing clothes, which meant the other girls could see all of my scars from my twelve childhood surgeries. The “cool girls” would point and laugh, and say I was “all sewed up.”

For three years, I attended that junior high, and for three years, I was despised and taunted. I learned to hate school, and try to be as invisible as possible. I would tell teachers what was happening, but they didn’t do a thing about it. I grew to hate my teachers, because they saw what was happening, and did nothing. My grades plummeted and for two of the three years, I didn’t have a single friend.

It was three years of being beaten-down, mentally, emotionally, and even physically. Because of my disability, I couldn’t run to get away from those who bullied me, but their cruel words hurt far more than the times they beat me up or threw rocks at me.

If they didn’t like my personality, so be it. If they didn’t want to be my friend, that was their right. But to taunt me over my disability, something I had no control over and couldn’t possibly change, was beyond unfair. To physically hurt me because they knew I wasn’t able to run away or fight back was beyond cruel. To those who taunted me, and to those who stood by and watched it happen, and did nothing, I only hope that somehow they found a way to live with themselves.

Years later, I ran into one of my tormentors as I was walking down the street in my neighborhood. She hollered across the street “I’m sorry I was so mean to you in Junior High.” I stopped and stood there for a moment, and finally answered “What do you expect me to say? That it’s okay? Don’t worry about it?” And then, I walked on.

I guess I should have told her that I forgive her, but she caught me off-guard. At that exact moment in time, I wasn’t ready to forgive. At that time, I still didn’t realize that I hadn’t brought all of this on myself. Deep down, I still believed that if I had done something differently, if I had been “good enough,” they would have liked me, and that it was my fault, that I had done something to cause what happened to me.

This was a year after I finished high school, and I still blamed myself for my misfortune. Honestly, I wasn’t even convinced she was being sincere. It wasn’t like she had sought me out to apologize, she just happened to pass me on the street. There was no explanation for her actions, no sincere expression of remorse – just a casual comment, hollered across a street. She didn’t even cross the street to speak directly to me.

There is, and always will be, a part of me that wonders if I should have replied differently. I don’t think I was wrong, but I’m really not sure.