It started the first month of fifth grade, in Mrs. Calvin's class.  

I didn't get in Mrs. Dollar's class, and she was the best teacher, I heard.  In my old school, I always got the teacher my parents wanted because my dad and granddad were well known and respected real estate developers, so they gave my brother and I the best teachers.  At least that's what we thought.

My dad had left the business world to become a social studies teacher in junior high in a new town.  The town was 'rough.'  There were racial tensions.

Osawatomie was a small town of less than five thousand south of Kansas City with the state mental hospital and reputation for fighting.  The West Elementary School principal made a rule to prevent the daily fights after school. Blacks walk on the north side of the streets home, and the whites walk on the south.  I had already had one run in with a black girl, Katherine and her friend Dorothy, where they chased me into the girls toilet and spit on me, towering over the metal sides by standing on the adjoining stalls.  

But my bully was different.  She was one of the most beautiful girls in class, with long wavy red hair, parted on the side with one wave over her eye, just like Jessica Rabbit.  She had the same boyfriend all through elementary school, Terry Billam.  Terry was a big, smart boy who loved having a girlfriend.   He was not shy, and talked as easily with girls as he did with boys.  

I first became aware of him when he gave me his oversized boy's ring and asked me to go steady with him.  I was new to the school.  I  had no idea about this "going steady,"  but I did like boys and it seemed like a good idea at the time.  It meant that we would play together during noon hour after lunch, and that he would give me a special valentine for Valentines Day when that came around.  I didn't know about Rita.

I liked playing at noon hour and made up games that a lot of the class would join in, including my best friends Irma and Paula Breedlove.  The girls would be one team, and the boys would be the other.  I called one game "Spider and the Fly."  The rules were that the team who was the Spiders would chase the team of Flies, and when they tagged them, they would take their prey to the chain link fence, which was the spider web, and the captured Fly could only leave the fence if another Fly could get to them, tag, and release them without them getting caught again.  

What a great excuse for physical contact among the pre-pubescents who really didn't like  girls or boys!  Terry caught me a number of times, and Irma would free me, to escape be caught again.  One time Terry grabbed my arm roughly and I remembered the jujitsu move my dad had taught me and my brothers.  I grabbed his arm with both hands and twisted under, landing a very surprised Terry flat on his back.  He tried to get back at me as the bell rang to go into the classrooms by grabbing my arm and twisting.  I quickly twirled under the arms with him, and maintained my balance.  I heard from my brothers that night that it was all around the school that I had "flipped" the toughest guy in school.  Great reputation.

Why Terry still liked me, I don't know.  

Somewhere in this, I got the word from Dorothy that Rita Hollowman, the red-head, was gunning for me. Rita was known for fighting and a red-hot temper, and she was looking to take me out for stealing her boyfriend.  I did the brave thing and hid out on the far corner of the school away from the playground, huddled with Irma.  We schemed.  What could we do about Rita?  

Chalk and a war of words is what came to me.  The anonymous insult. There was a narrow alley with a cement wall on the west of the school yard.  Irma and I started writing the biggest insult we could think of, "Rita + Jesse."  Jesse was a twin who had trouble reading.  Rita was nice to him.  We wrote and wrote, filling the wall, then running away and hiding again.  Dorothy found us and said Rita was REALLY mad now.  We decided we'd be safer on the big playground with at least the teachers within yelling distance.

Rita and her posse caught up with us that day.  Rita grabbed me roughly by both arms and started yelling in my face, "You take it back!," (I think) while her buddies grabbed Irma to keep my diminutive friend from helping me.  

"Girl fight...girl fight...girl fight..."  The chanting drew the entire student body into a packed circle around Rita and me.  Rita squeezed my arms, pushing me down and pinning me against the asphalt and the cement wall. I started laughing.  And laughing and laughing, not fighting back, but laughing as she pushed and shoved, with her face turning as red as her hair.

Teachers came and pulled us apart, dragging each of us in by the arm to the principal's office, while they called our parents.   I was mortified.  I had never been to the principal's office, I had never had my parents called.  I had never fought with anyone except my younger brothers, and everyone knows they don't count.  I always got straight A's with the occasional B, and superior, or at least good, marks for deportment.   I waited for my mother in the nurses station where I lay down on a couch.  The teacher came in and asked me if I wanted to return to class.  I refused.  When they asked again, I refused again.  My mother had to come.  Rita went back to class.

The counselor talked to me, the nurse talked to me, and finally my mother talked to me.  They finally talked me into returning to class after the afternoon recess.  I didn't look at anyone in class, rushing right home after school.

That was a hard year for me, and for a lot of other people.  Rita apologized because her sunday school teacher said that she was wrong in picking a fight with me, even if I did do something bad too.  

I didn't.  My brothers and I shouted, "Hollow-head Hollowman," out my car window the next time I saw her.  

Another friend, Margaret, rode her bicycle out to my house to ride my pony.   I was not gracious.  A few weeks later, Margaret was killed in a car accident, while sitting pre-seatbelt-era  on her mother's lap.  They slid on icy roads into a road grader and she was thrown from the car.  She was the first funeral I went to.   I was genuinely sad that I hadn't treated her better, even though we did ride my pony.  I cried.

I looked for Rita on Facebook and on the internet.  I looked for Terry Billam and Paula Breedlove.  I didn't remember Dorothy or Katherine's last names, or that of Irma.  The only one from that class I found was Vincent Zubowitz, whose father was the head of the Mental Hospital.  He's a doctor now.  He didn't seem to remember any of this...but did let me know that I had misspelled "Osawatomie" the first time.  (I had two "s.") 

Who was the bully?  Who was the bullied? 

Rita...where ever you are...I'm sorry.  I'm really sorry.

I continued to be bullied throughout my whole junior high and high school career.  Maybe I was too different.  I was prone to blurt out, be aggressive, and be insensitive to others, while being overly sensitive and insecure, depression rebounding with every step.  I guess I had to keep learning the lesson I didn't get from Rita.

I am sorry that we didn't learn as children how to deal with each other on an equal, problem-solving basis.  I'm sorry we didn't learn to use consensus for decision making as do the children of Denmark.  I'm sorry that we didn't learn that there are shades of gray instead of black or white, and that it is okay to be wrong.   

I wonder if I got it?  I wonder if Rita remembers me?