Trigger Warning: Bullying and Abuse.

When I was in elementary school, I was bullied by the kid who lived across the street. It started the day we moved in, and it continued until the day we moved out.

His bullying was relentless: I’d be sitting in my front yard playing with my Star Wars figures, and he’d come over and start threatening to take them, break them, hurt me, whatever he had on his broken little mind, until I either started crying or ran into my house. I remember riding my Big Wheel on my sidewalk, and this kid rode up behind me on his dirt bike, crashed it into my back, knocked my legs under my big wheel, and pushed me up the sidewalk until my screams brought parents out of houses. I had skin torn off my spine, and I still have two scars on my knees, and one on the top of my left foot. He shot me with his BB gun one day, narrowly missing my eye. The one time I punched him in the nose, he ran to his dad, who came out of his house and yelled at me. I remember being terrified that he was going to hit me, or worse.

This kid was abusive and cruel. If he’d been an adult, the things he did to me would have qualified as assault, but whenever my parents confronted his parents, nothing happened. I remember being angry with them for not doing more to protect me, but realize in retrospect that they probably did everything they could; this kid’s father was a gun nut, ran with bikers, had friends in the local police department, and basically got away with anything. Eventually, I just stopped telling my parents about my bully, because he’d just bully me worse when I did.

I don’t know what happened to that kid as he grew up. His older siblings were in and out of jail a lot, has father beat his mother, and I would be very surprised if anyone in that family went on to live a happy and fulfilling life. If I’m being honest, I hope that kid is in jail somewhere where he can’t hurt anybody else.

I haven’t thought about that kid in years — these aren’t the kinds of memories that I want to revisit — but I saw some people talking about stopping bullying on Twitter today, including this from Anne:

My son was repeatedly bullied by a kid in 4th grade. The principal made excuses for the kid such as “He comes from a single parent home.”

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

I couldn’t get any teachers, counselors or even the principal to stop this kid from bullying Ryan. The kid did it for years&it was horrible

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

The school finally did suspended the kid who kept bullying Ryan in 7th grade after having to pay for medical bills for Ryan.

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

Ryan was shoved over a railing & hit his head,causing a concussion & whiplash. Because it happened on school grounds, they had to pay for it

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

No one should have to endure bullying. It shouldn’t take physical injury for a school to step in & stop years of emotional injury.

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

Be a good parent, whether you’re single or not. Teach your child to love & respect themselves enough to treat others the same way.

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

I was a single parent for years. That is the worst excuse for allowing bullying, ever. I told the principal that & he had no comment.

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

My mom rant is done. #StopBullying

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

Anne and I are both sitting here, in our hotel in Texas, crying at these memories. Years later, bullying still hurts.

I also hadn’t thought about all the torment that Ryan had to endure, until I read Anne’s Twitter. I remembered how helpless we felt, how we tried and tried and tried to get someone at the school to do something — to do anything — to help our son, and how the school just made excuses until our son was seriously injured. The school didn’t care at all that he was emotionally abused, and never bothered to address the physical abuse until it cost them money.

The thing is, the bullying that Ryan and I both endured was entirely random. Though our experiences were roughly 20 years apart, they fit a pattern: We did nothing to deserve it. Some kid who was unhappy decided to make us a target, we were helpless to stop it, and the people we turned to who should have helped stop it either couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Just sitting here right now, remembering it, I want to go back in time and make that goddamn school, starting with the coward who was the principal at Ryan’s elementary school, do something about it, so I could save my son from suffering torment that he didn’t deserve, that no child deserves.

Ryan and I both grew up to be successful and happy adults. I don’t know what happened to my bully, but Ryan’s bully is stuck in the community he grew up in, working a dead end job. He looks miserable, and I’m not proud to admit that I’m glad. I hope he suffers for a long time. I’m ashamed to admit that whenever I see him, I want to hurt him the way he hurt my son, but it seems that life is doing that for me.

Who knows what that kid could have done with his life if he’d gotten the help he needed to choose a different path? Who knows how many other kids he hurt, because nobody did anything to stop him?

All people deserve to be happy, and all children deserve to grow up in an environment where they feel safe and free. Schools need to have clear policies in place to stop bullying. Communities need to make it very clear that bullying won’t be tolerated, and bullies — and their parents — need to be held accountable for their actions.

I often feel like Twitter hashtag things are great for making a lot of noise, but not very useful for actually accomplishing meaningful goals. I sincerely hope that this one will be different. Don’t just talk about how we need to #StopBullying, actually do something about it. Talk to parents and kids, live your life by example, and let’s break the cycle, together.

Not sure why I’m all-caps serious in the title, but it probably has something to do with not getting enough sleep last night, driving through fuckingawfulawfulawful traffic to get to work and back today (I’m in an audiobook version of a graphic novel that will come out in December and we finished it today), and the realization that it’s almost Halloween and I haven’t put up a single scary decoration, not even a list of what chicken nuggets are actually made of.

But I digress: Anne and I are coming to Texas for some shows this week with Paul and Storm. Information follows:

Thu 10/17:  Central Presbyterian Church – Austin, TX – tix: 
Fri 10/18:  Fitzgerald’s – Houston, TX – tix: 
Sun 10/20:  Granada Theater – Dallas, TX – tix:

And now here’s the sound a cow makes:

MOOOOOOOOOO

Okay, now that I’ve taken care of that business, I can go pick out and pack clothes for our trip.

I worked on Ben Ten this morning, bringing a little Darkstar into the booth with a whole bunch of my friends who I don’t get to see nearly as often as I want.

We had a hell of a good time, as usual, and when we were on our way out, Yuri, Ashley, and I lingered in the lobby of the Cartoon Network building, which is essentially a gallery of wonderful works of art created by artists who work there.

One of the other actors came out of the recording booth, and saw us. “What are you guys doing?”

“Looking at art,” Ashley said.

“And wishing I could afford to buy this one,” I said, pointing to a gorgeous acrylic on canvas of the main characters in Mad Monster Party.

“Have you guys ever seen The Stairwell?” He asked us. I could tell by the way that he said it that The Stairwell was capitalized, and important.

We all shook our heads. “No,” one of us said.

“Oh you have got to come see this,” he said. “I didn’t even know it existed until recently when I opened the wrong door trying to find the bathroom.”

He walked us across the lobby, to a door that I’ve seen a hundred times, but never really noticed, if you know what I mean. He opened it, and I said, “… and they were never seen or heard from again!”

The walls in The Stairwell were covered with drawings of all sorts, done in pen, marker, spray paint, and other media. Some of them were dated as long ago as 2005, which I realize isn’t quite The Before Times, but is still one Pon farr ago.

Without realizing it, I was climbing the stairs, drawn forward by drawings of Cartoon Network characters, hilarious scenes and commentary that is most certainly not for being shared on a blog, and then this thing that blew my mind.

I rounded a corner a few flights up and saw that a cardboard Darth Vader had been hung in front of a florescent tube, making it look like the tube was a light sabre. “Yuri you have to come up here right now!” I hollered down the staircase. A moment later, Yuri poked his head around the corner of the landing, and saw what I saw.

“Oh. My. God.” He said.

“Right?” I said. I took a few steps up so I could take a picture … and saw that it was even better: Mace Windu was on the other side, holding out a light sabre of his own. That’s when I noticed that … well, here, let me just show you the crappy cell phone picture I took:

If you click to embiggen that, you’ll see even more awesome detail.

“OH MY GOD YOU HAVE TO COME UP HERE TO ME RIGHT NOW BECAUSE HURRY.” I said.

Yuri climbed the stairs and stood next to me. We looked at this work of art in stunned and reverent silence. Ashley joined us.

“This is amazing,” I said. They agreed.

We walked all the way up The Stairwell, until we got to the top floor. “I hope this is one of those magic stairwells where you get to the top, and when you go down to the bottom you discover all this artwork that you didn’t see the first time,” I said, “and also there’s a circus at the bottom where they give you beer and burritos.”

It was agreed that this would be a fortuitous turn of events, were it to come to pass, and we all started to walk down The Stairwell. As if by magic, or perhaps by merely looking at things we had not looked at on the way up, new works of art materialized on the walls around us, including this little bit of hilarity from 2009:

What I love about that, other than the obviously correct commentary, is the idea that someone wanted to write “Star Wars Rules!” and someone else thought up what the literal Rules of Star Wars would be, if they existed. There was a lot of that hilarious thing you see on college campuses where someone writes one thing, and someone else adds a comment to it, or subtly changes its meaning.

We made our way out of The Stairwell. I thanked David, the other actor who showed us that particular passage to Art Narnia, and hugged Ashley goodbye.

“Hey,” I said to Yuri as we walked toward our cars, “it’s Wednesday. Want to go to the comic shop?”

“You know I do,” he said.

“I’ll meet you there.”

“Done and done.”

A few minutes later, we were in the comic shop, picking up a few books that are perfect for rainy afternoon reading. When we said goodbye, I told him, “tell your wife I love her, and we hope to see you guys soon.”

“Give my love to Anne, and all your pets,” he said, “and we’ll get together when you guys get back from Texas.”

“Have a great day,” I said.

“I’ve already had a great day!” Yuri said, “everything else that happens today is just icing on the cake!”

Before I could tell him that I don’t like cake, he said, “Wait! This is the icing, because the icing is the best part.”

“Yeah, I just throw the cake away, anyway” I said.

We waved goodbye, and headed to our respective cars. Raindrops began to fall from the dark grey sky.