My alarm goes off at 5:30. Another day of school, I think as I fight the rising tears from my eyes. Most kids dread the getting up early, classes, and homework too. Not me. I dread the peers, the commenters, and the watchers. I dread the bullies that have haunted my days since the start of junior kindergarten. I get up, get dressed in my uniform, another yellow polo and green plaid jumper, and head down for breakfast. My mom meets me with the same sad look each morning.
“Good morning, Sweetheart,” she says, trying to sound bright as sunshine. She’s scared for me. They are so mean, so relentless. A private Catholic school does not mean the kids are any less cruel.
I get out my cereal, pour it in my bowl, and eat while thinking about my day. No doubt I feel like crying again today. Dad will give me the same old line of “You just gotta show ‘em what this tough cookie is made out of!” while holding up my little fist. A ten-year-old girl in her plaid jumper and brown pigtails isn’t exactly the most threatening. Grandma will tell me to stay a strong Catholic, that it is their own fault on judgement day. Teachers will tell me it will change, they will help. My aunt will say that, though it hurts, they are just words and will go away. Mom will let me cry on her shoulder and I will think,  Words can hurt more than any blow ever could, because words ring through my head like an ever-echoing gunshot shredding through my confidence.
I finish my breakfast and go upstairs to the only bathroom in our house to brush my teeth and hair, but my baby sister starts to cry and Mom is cooking breakfast for Dad.
I am in no sports or activities. My dad works full time at the family business and my mom takes care of my grandma who just fell and broke her hip. Mom is pretty tired when she picks me up from school and takes me to grandma’s house. So I do my homework and take care of my two little sisters, four-year-old Sara and baby Abby. It is just an additional thing that is apparently funny to peers, that I don’t do “fun”stuff.
Mom comes up to take the baby and I finish my morning routine. Then it is off to school. I go to a tiny little Catholic school placed in the middle of farm fields. On an autumn day such as this, the school seems a beautiful, peaceful place. Or so it seems from the outside. On the inside, I know the names and jokes await. I try to the resist the urge to beg my mom not to go. She has enough to deal with as is.
I crawl out of the car with Sara and walk her to junior kindergarten. Already I hear the snickers and Sara looks at me scared, but I just shake my head.
“It’s nothing Bubbles, (I call her Bubbles because of the noise she made when she was a baby) they just don’t understand what it is like to have an amazing little sister like you.”
She smiles. I live for that. Just to make her smile and feel confident in herself means the world to me. At least she can feel what I can’t.
I walk in the door with her into the classroom and am bombarded with the hugs of little children. This is the favorite part of my day. All of Sara’s classmates think it is the coolest thing to have an older kid recognize them. I greet them all by name and receive their hugs.
“Got to go, kiddos,” I say to the swarm. The teacher smiles at me. This has come a daily routine that seems to amuse her greatly. “Hey, Bubbles. Love ya,” I wink at her and get another smile and giggle. But my escape from reality is over. I must now go to my own classroom. 3rd grade. Room 103.
I walk in the classroom as the bell rings and take my seat, my eyes trained on the floor. The morning announcements come on the overhead and I listen through the gossiping of the group, of which I will call ‘the populars,’ behind me.
“All rise for the pledge.”
We say the pledge and then I am chosen out of the class to read the morning prayer. I hear the whispers from behind me and get nervous. I stumble over my words and can hardly get out the prayer. The populars laugh openly, not in the least trying to conceal their laughter at their thought that I have a speech disability. I flush red with embarrassment.
“What’s wrong? Can’t you talk marble mouth?” a boy comments loud enough for everyone but the teacher to hear. This is met with a chorus of laughter.
“Cat got your tongue?”
“Oh. Poor thing doesn’t know how to talk.”
“Mumbles and her sister Bubbles.”
“Leave her alone,” I said, “She has nothing to do with this.”
“Quiet!!” yelled the teacher. “Now, on to the lesson for today...”
The day’s lessons kept me safe from comments coming from the other students, but eventually lunch and recess came. I walked through line through the lunch room, hearing the whisperings passed from my own peers to those younger and older, and get my lunch. I sat alone with a few others who considered themselves outcasts. I never talked to them. I sat there and ate my lunch and tried to ignore the world. I just tried to shut out everyone. I would always go up to get seconds. The lunch lady was nice to me. Looking back I think she probably made her son be friends with me. He never did like me.
By the time I got back to the table, the populars had finished their lunch and sought out their target. I sat again and they swarmed around me. Acting like it was a joke, like they weren’t killing me inside. The other “outcasts” did nothing. They sat and watched or they went out to recess. I ate quickly and went out myself with an ever laughing crowd behind me.
Once I got outside I ran, which again made me weird. But I didn’t care. I ran around the jungle gym until they all got bored of chasing me. Sometimes I spent all recess running. It didn’t matter. I loved it.
When I wasn’t running, I would have the company of the lunch lady’s son (it was my dream that he had a crush on me) and my only friend. My best friend. She was another girl that was  ignored by the others. At least she wasn’t endlessly picked on.
Classes came again with the whisperings of rumors laced with my name. But finally school was over. Classmates got in their last comments as I raced out the door. But I got in the car and everything was okay.
Sara would be waiting in the car for me with a smile with Abby cooing in the carseat and Mom behind the wheel. As soon as I got in, she started moving. She knew I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could. She asked how my day was, which she knew was one of two answers. One: “I’m fine mom” (which meant it was still a bad day but not bad enough for me to break down crying. I just wanted to forget). Or two: I would start sobbing and tell her all that had happened and the teacher didn’t help and that I hated school and never ever wanted to go back even though every morning I would get up and start again.
We drove to Grandma’s house and the routine kept going. I got my sisters out of the car and played with them and took care of them while Mom made dinner for our family and Grandma and Grandpa. If I had homework, I would put Dora on TV and have Sara and Abby watch that while I finished. After Grandpa and Dad got home, we would say grace, eat, and go home. Finally.
The first thing I would do is go to my room to think. Everyone knew I was crying out the day’s frustration. No one bothered me. I come out after a while and Dad and I would engage in our nightly routine: wrestling. Well, sort of. Our version of wrestling was usually him laying on my “special blankie” from my grandma and me trying to get it out from underneath the 400 pound man. It must’ve looked pretty interesting, a little girl trying to beat up her not so little dad. But I didn’t care. We had fun.
Before I knew it, it was time for prayers and bed. When Mom and Dad would put me to bed they would ask if I needed to talk about anything. Sometimes I did. Other times I didn’t. Then I went to bed. Only to wake up the next morning.
However, this day was different.
It started out the same with my morning routine, my mom driving me to school, me dropping of my sister in the junior kindergarten room, and the announcements and prayer. But that day was the trip to the zoo. A day of excitement, fun, and lack of supervision (if you get what I mean). But this was the day that gave me hope.
The bus ride to the zoo was long and full of comments made to put me down. I remember thinking it was going to be a long day.
Once we got to the zoo, we split into two groups that we would be in most of the day. This unfortunately separated me from my friend. The group walked through the animal exhibits. The penguins, the hippos, the giraffes, the lions, the bats. But it was at the grizzly bear exhibit that the event happened. Finally I had had enough.
After much picking on, I started to bite my nails as a nervous habit, giving them another thing for them to pick on me about. The populars took no delay in doing so. I have long since forgotten what the original comment the girl made, only that I retaliated for once.
“Leave me alone! I never did anything to you!” I screamed.
The crowd was like a too-quiet house, still with the feeling that something is waiting just around the corner of time. The words I yelled rang throughout my ears. I felt great! but yet I felt horrible for sinking to the verbal outburst. The girl saw my burst was done and she was about to take dominance again. But a hand stopped her. An tall old man with salt and pepper short cropped hair and a cleaned shaved face came up from behind and put his hand on the girl’s shoulder. He gently pulled her backwards away from me. Still the crowd watched. He put his gentle touch on my shoulders, one hand on each, and knelt down in front of me.
He then said in a gentle voice, “Is there a problem here, ma’am?”
I can’t explain why, but I trusted this man fully. So I nodded.
“Did I hear this girl here is picking on you?” he asked. Again I nodded. “Now why would she want to do that?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered, though no doubt the silent crowd could still hear, “They all pick on me.” I nodded my head to my group and the other who just realized was there.
“You are afraid?”
“Yes. There are so many of them. There is only one of me.”
“You feel alone?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” he said as if understanding fully, “we will just have to fix that now, won’t we?”
I looked at him confused, but he stood from his kneeling position and looked around. The crowd was captivated by this old man. If the grizzly bear started doing hand stands, I don’t believe the attention of this crowd could be divided for a second. He began slowly.
“I trust you all saw what just happened here. This girl,” he said circling around behind me, his hands finding their place on my shoulders again, “is being bullied. She is being picked on. She doesn’t know why.”
Silence. Attention. If the sky split in two and poured gumballs, not a child would scream in joy. If a deafening thunder clapped across the sky, not a one would hear it. The Aurora Borealis broke out in the middle of the day, no one would see it. At that moment, I felt the world had stopped. Stopped dead in its tracks. And all had their eyes, ears, minds trained on me.
But I wasn’t scared. The old man stood behind me tall and confident. And I felt such appreciation for this man, whom I didn’t know, who was standing up for me.
“She feels alone.” he turned to me, “Now I think that is a horrible thing, to feel alone, and excuse me for saying, ma’am. But you are wrong. You are not alone.”
I was shocked. To hear that I am not alone? To hear that there is someone else that thinks the way I do?
He again addressed the crowd saying, “I’d be willing to bet that a good deal of you standing here have felt, at one point, the same way that this young girl does now. Hurt. Shy. Picked on. And just plain alone. If you’ve ever felt alone, if you’ve ever felt hurt. If you’ve ever felt discarded or neglected, come here.”
The crowd came to stand behind me and the old man. They all stood tall and brave and defiant behind me. Even my teacher joined behind me. Only the students who picked on me remained standing across from me in a group that now seemed small. They stood there with small character.
The zookeeper turned me around and I looked into his blue eyes and saw a caring smile. I began to tear up.
“No one is ever alone. Everyone you see who stands here behind you is your support. They were once neglected. They were once called names. They were once alone. They were  hurt. But now they look to you. What you see is an army. An Army of Rejects behind you. Here you see the people who would have loved to be like you. Who would have loved to stand their ground and take back their voice as you just did. There are more to join you. But they are lucky. They will know they are not alone. You will be there to tell them that. To be the voice they lost. To help them rise again. Because you will rise to make a difference.”
I was crying now. But I knew what he was saying. I nodded my agreement.
“Then show me that voice.”
I turned to the group that had mentally hurt me so long. They looked scared. Like I would do the same thing to them as they did to me. I could have. No one would have blamed me. But I didn’t.
“I don’t need your approval. I am who I am in all that I am. And I don’t need your approval  to be me. I am a person. I am a voice. Hear me now.”
“Good. Don’t be afraid to make your story known,” the zookeeper said.
I turned to thank him. But he was gone. As if in a dream. But the attention didn’t leave. It was on me. So instead I thanked the crowd for their support. And the day went on. One could almost say it was normal. Except there was no teasing, no names, no taunting. The field trip finished with a silent bus ride home. Heads bowed, thoughts searched. It was a lot for a group of third graders to think about.
I am now in high school and still remember that day almost as if it were yesterday. I never told anyone in detail what happened until now. I only said I gained my confidence. I have searched for the man who appeared to help me but he disappeared as quickly as he came. All I can be is thankful.
Everyone has their defining moment. And this was mine. So I share it now with his words echoing in my mind. An Army of Rejects behind me. We will rise. Because I don’t need your approval. And I’m not afraid to make my story known.