Yes, there's bullying in the homeschooling world, too

So…the Zoo Atlanta program, part 2.

It wasn’t all fun and games.

The dim spot was H.o.p. said several of the boys bullied him in the bathroom over his long hair, they kept pushing him out, saying, “You’ve got long hair, you’re a girl, you can’t come in here”, and didn’t stop until an older boy came around and got them to lay off.

What is it with all the boys who bully over long hair?

It’s especially weird for H.o.p. because few men in his world have neat little trim haircuts. Many of them have long hair or kind of long hair or are shaven.

H.o.p’s dad has long hair. And H.o.p. likes his long hair and H.o.p. isn’t going to cut it off for anyone. It’s not how he operates. He doesn’t change himself for people. And H.o.p.’s being an artistic, head-in-the-clouds dreamer sort of person, well that doesn’t make it any easier on him.

H.o.p.’s been bullied for his hair. He’s been bullied for his not caring for sports, not liking to play sports. He’s been bullied for being dyslexic. He’s been bullied for being an artist. H.o.p.’s been bullied for being nice. H.o.p.’s been bullied for being himself.

Thank goodness he doesn’t think he has to change himself.

H.o.p. never walks away when he’s bullied. He thinks he should be able to get people to be friends. He smiles and jokes and tries to be friends. Despite the fact he’s hurt.

“It’s like they want to torment my soul,” he says.

And he still tries to be friends because it’s impossible for him to imagine that they all can’t meet on some common friendly ground.

“It reminds me of racism and what it must have been like when African Americans weren’t allowed to use the same bathrooms as white people,” H.o.p. said. “I think they’re practicing hairism.”

I asked him if any of the African American kids bullied him.

“No.”

Which, oddly enough, is the way it tends to be. In fact, when H.o.p. was little, for several years he would only play with African American kids. Why? Because they didn’t bully him and he had gotten so he didn’t trust white boys at all.

So after the older boy had stopped the bullying, H.o.p. tried regaling them with a scary mystery horror story about a haunted bathroom (because they were in the bathroom, after all). He said he was hoping with his telling a scary mystery horror story about a haunted bathroom that they’d accept him as a boy, because boys like scary mystery horror stories, and that they’d stop calling him a girl because he has long hair. And he showed them on his camera some pictures on the memory card of some of the sculptures he’d recently made of an imaginary character (which is sometimes scary and sometimes humorous) and a little movie he’d been making of it.

I don’t think he showed them the film he was making last night of the camera tripod, because it was just a cute robot exploring the apartment and reacting to things with curiosity and surprise. It wasn’t a character with scary, mysterious elements.

H.o.p. says he thinks they liked his story because one of them said it was “creepy” and they didn’t bully him the rest of the time.

Who knows…were they swayed by H.o.p.’s story into accepting him? Or was it just that the older boy was there and then outside the bathroom they were again around the adult guide? H.o.p. seems to think that they liked his story.

I’m just glad the older boy showed up because this could have become a very embarrassing episode for H.o.p. He needed to use the bathroom! They weren’t letting him! And if it had turned embarrassing there would have been no repairing it, he would have never wanted to return to the zoo. Which he loves and of which we’ve been members for almost the full last seven years.

Damn bullies.