Sixth grade was the year of my bully. 

It was the year of my parents' divorce.  The damage had been done. I was a ten year old, nail-biting, nervous wreck.  The fighting, the yelling, the objects flying;  it all made for a world too precarious for the fragile child I had become.

Everything startled me that year. I was like a feral cat. Skittish and unwanted. I was afraid of my life at home and afraid of my life at school.

My fear at school was the sixth grade math teacher. I was a small girl which may have made Mr. Thompson seem so much larger. But I know I am remembering him accurately: A large man with a large bald head. He had the same smile as the Cheshire cat illustration in my English book. He was my bully.

To release some of my pain that year, I wrote in my diary and I wore my blue dress. My diary kept my thoughts from overtaking me and the dress, well, the dress was a ritual I couldn't quit. My soft blue cotton dress comforted me and protected me. It kept me safe. I wore it every day.

Mr.Thompson seemed to take a perverse pleasure in picking on me. He made comments about my "new" dress when in fact he had seen it just yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that.  I thought I might wear the stylish tan sweater and skirt my mother bought me with the red and tan striped belt. But when I put it on that morning I knew it wouldn't do. I knew Mr. Thompson would make a comment, but I wore it anyway. It kept me safe. 

That terrible day in Mr.Thompson's class, I sat armed with my blue dress and my diary. I jotted down a few thoughts. A few words to make myself feel better. I wrote: I love mommy.

I looked up to see the giant of a man looming over my desk. He demanded I hand over the notebook. The notebook where I wrote all sorts of crazy things to comfort myself. To keep myself sane. 

 Ho ho! What's this? I love mommy? Well, well.  I swear he licked his lips as he read my secret words out loud. He would devour his weakest prey on this day.

I felt my blue cotton dress sticking to my back. I was shamed and humiliated. I was a baby who still wanted her mommy.  Girls my age were writing about crushes on sixth grade boys. Girls my age were pairing their first name with a boy's  last name in their notebooks. 

Can I have it back, I barely whispered. It's my notebook. I think I was stammering.

Mr. Thompson laughed a laugh that made the hairs on my neck tingle.  A grown man was teasing me, no, bullying me in front of the whole sixth grade. It was a bad day.

I limped through that year like a girl whose legs had been broken along with her spirit. I had been exposed for the emotional cripple I was.  I watched as things crumbled around me at home and now at school.

I often wondered why my mother did not insist I change my dress. I had a closet full of clothes. Maybe she was too sad to notice. Her world was crumbling too. She washed and ironed that blue cotton dress every day. It was a spring dress. It made me a little happy. I wore it for a month straight. Eventually it let me down. It could not keep me safe at home or at school.

August came around. It was time for a new beginning. Junior high and school shopping were only weeks away. My mother asked if I wanted the same blue dress in a larger size for the new school year. I cringed at the memory of how crazy I had acted in the sixth grade, and how I paid for that craziness. No, I was ready to move on.  I certainly wasn't going to be that girl in junior high school. 

 I would blend in at my new school.

I would change my clothes every day.

I would not write I love mommy in a notebook.

I would keep my craziness to myself and keep the bullies away.