Last week I interviewed Nicolle Napier--Ionascu, a clinical neuropsychologist with Presbyterian Healthcare. In describing what she called “true -bullies,” she noted there’s a difference between bullying (which involves humiliation) and simply being teased, a more common phenomenon. While true, the distinction is far more gray than black and white.

Slam!
While Union County Weekly editor Pat Higgins and I discussed the differences, she confessed, “In my day, all we had were slam books.”

“You had what?” I asked, arching my right eyebrow.

“Slam books,” she repeated matter-of-factly. “You know, we bound some paper together and wrote mean things about people in it. You kept it anonymous but wrote nasty things about everyone in your class.”

Staffer Jonathan Reed and I locked eyes. “Like in ‘Mean Girls!’” we shouted in unison, referencing the Tina Fey-penned movie that somehow manages to shine despite Lindsay Lohan in the lead role.

In the film, a group of popular girls (known as “The Plastics”) create a mean book about everyone in their grade. Predictably, word gets out and the pages get distributed. Chaos ensues.

At the layout table I laughed and shook my head. I probably uttered things like, “Man! How mean! Who would do that?”

It didn’t take long for me to recall that I had done the same thing in my seventh-grade yearbook.

Snowballing snark
Chalk it up to the heady confusion of hormonal development. Call it peer pressure or simply ascribe it to senselessness. Whatever you want to call it, I sat at the layout table with vivid images flashing through my mind of the black-and-white photos of my seventh-grade classmates in my 1994 yearbook. Most feature my -wicked, -serial-killer handwriting spelling out cruel nicknames over students’ heads.

It started innocently enough. I was signing yearbooks with a friend who had a serious streak of sarcasm coursing through her veins (like I don’t!). She wrote a mean nickname next to someone’s head. It snowballed from there.

There’s Toothpick, Big Foot, Rat Boy, Bald Eagle (poor kid was prematurely balding) and Beef Jerky. My friend and I put permanent marker halos over our own heads.

It was not one of my shining moments. I regretted it almost immediately. In what can only be classified as seventh-grade stupidity, I realized sheepishly that no one else could sign my yearbook because everyone would see the nastiness I had written. Ashamed, I hid the book for years. Even though I’d shelved the book, some of the nicknames stuck.

Commonplace cruelty
I’m not trying to make light of bullying. Truth is it’s commonplace and far more cunning (in my experience) in girls than in boys. Guys tend to go outside and beat the snot out of each other. Girls, instead, use words and biting mockery to leave scars on people’s psyches that linger for years.

I read with horror the accounts of -recent school violence – the bullying and ostracism that has resulted in school shootings or the teasing on MySpace pages that has resulted in suicide.

I wonder who could be so cruel.

And then I remember Stilts, Ape Boy and – worst of all – Shovel Face, and I recall that it’s people just like me. Just like every one of us.