Birds Fly...Bullies Give Wedgies

Richie is on the lookout for bullies. He saw some cheezy cartoon about them. Now he thinks about them all the time.

In a good way, though. He is the hero in the bully scenarios he imagines. Richie believes that he will be the one to finally put a stop to the wedgies bullies give.

According to the T.V. show, this is the defining characteristic of a bully.

As Richie explains, a bully is "you know: a jerk. Somebody who gives wedgies."

He has to explain this to me every time he says the word because I can never understand him.
Because of his 4-year-old way of talking, it sounds like he is saying "birdie."

I was shocked in the car the other day when he said, "If I see a birdie, I'm going to punch him in the stomach."

"Richie!" I said. "You don't punch birdies!"

"Not a birdie," he said. "A birdie. You know. A guy who gives wedgies."

To further clarify matters, Johnny said, "Birdies fly. Bullies give wedgies."

As though bullies are a species unto themselves, like canaries.

"Oh. Well, maybe you could just stay away from those guys," I said.

If they even exist. I have yet to hear a real-life story of someone who was given wedgies by the school bully. Or shoved in a locker. Or given a swirly.

Granted, I went to an all girls school--so there weren't the traditional boy-bullies. One senior girl was mean to us, yelling things like, "Get off my stairway, freshman!" But she wore a pink polkadot ribbon in her hair everyday, so it was hard to take her seriously. It was like being bullied by Shirley Temple.

Still, I think that bullies look different than they do on T.V. They might even be your friends. Then one day, they're acting mean.

Or they're a group of people that are snotty. If they catch you on a bad day, you assume that there's something wrong with you. When in fact, they probably just have bad social skills.

Or they're kids who single out the most miserable kid in the room and make fun of him. Eventually, they realize that this is totally uncool. Or they grow up to be total deuschbags. Excuse the expression,but I think that is the technical term for it.

Like many things on T.V., the wedgie-giving school bully seems to be a myth.

The truth is, your average, run-of-the-mill school bully comes in all different shapes and sizes. But you can deal with them all in the same way: Like a bird encountering a human, fly away. Sooner or later, so will everybody else.

Of course, I didn't tell Richie any of this. I'll let him believe that one day he will convince birdies
everywhere to stop giving people wedgies...I mean bullies everywhere.