Bully Bully.

Most parents worry when they send their kids to school that another kid will bully them. In school that was never an issue, but things were quite different on the home front. Although she was six years older than me, my oldest sister, Debbie became my bully from about the time until I was 6 to the time she got married. While it’s hard to believe that at 4’8″, Debbie could pose much more of a threat than that of an individual munchkin to the Wicked Witch of the West, her bullying could be more characterized as psychological warfare.

It all started when Debbie became deemed old enough that my parents allowed her to babysit Lauren and me. Just that little taste of power created a little Napoleonic Monster, who felt like she had been granted abject power over her younger sisters. She took this to the point that she forced us to address her as Master or wouldn’t give us the Chicken D’Lite dinners that my mom would have her order for us. Lauren dutifully would listen to everyone of Debbie’s commands including Lauren being forced to rub her master’s feet and she’d allow Debbie to flub her belly with making raspberry fart sounds by Debbie pressing her lips to Lauren’s stomach. Debbie would make us drink sauerkraut juice or the juice from canned peas before feeding us dinner. When we’d have pudding or ice cream for dessert, she’d give us less than she’d give herself. Then, she would beg us for more using a little baby’s voice saying, “Momma Bird, Baby Bird is hung-we. Can Baby Bird have a spoonful of Momma Bird’s pudding?” Lauren would cave every time and give her some of her dessert. For sharing with her, Debbie would let Lauren stay up late and watch tv. However, I’d never submit to her Baby Bird ploy. One day, she relentlessly kept on with the Baby Bird act trying to cheat me out of my God given right to my tapioca pudding. Finally, I responded, “Yes, Baby Bird, you can have some of Momma Bird’s pudding.” I scooped up a big spoonful of the pudding and caught her salivating with the satisfaction of winning, as she anticipated that spoonful coming her way. Just as I was going to pass it her way, I wound up and threw it at her face with, as it landed with a plop above Debbie’s eye. Lauren and I laughed and laughed taunting our bully, as the plop ran down Debbie’s face. From that point, the bully knew she was on notice, although that didn’t stop her from being evil.

When I was in first grade, my Mom allowed Debbie to cut my hair. I pleaded with my Mom to not let her, but Debbie kept saying that she got an “A” in home ec, as they taught the girls to cut hair. Debbie won and she had me sit on the closed toilet seat and began cutting my hair. Into about 5 minutes of the haircut, Debbie let out a little “Oops” and yelled up to our Mom telling her that I had moved and it caused her make my bangs short. Debbie told our Mom that she’d be able to even them up and the bangs would look fine. Debbie began evening up one side and then would even the other. She kept doing it and by the time she finished, I had 1/4″ fringe bangs that very much like how hotel curtains won’t fully close without a gap, my 1/4′ fringe bangs wouldn’t let my hair separate into a part.

Debbie would constantly taunt me by calling me in a sing song voice, “Karissimo, Felissimo, Karissimo, Felissimo” When I’d get enraged, she’d just say that she was just saying my name in Spanish, but wouldn’t stop. Eventually, I’d tackle her and start hitting her, then I’d get punished for using violence. She’d start singing King of the Road with the lyrics, “Trailer for sale or rent, rooms to let 50 cents…” knowing how I hated the song. While these things don’t seem like much, it was the relentlessness of her singing that song and chanting “Karissimo, Felissimo” that became the Chinese Water Torture of my childhood. Being in elementary school, my ability to verbally defend myself was elementary. I eventually would crack and take the dwarf down with my younger, but stronger, fists. While neither of my parents approved of me hitting Debbie, my Dad would always side with Debbie and my Mom would protect me knowing that Debbie fully bullied me. When I wanted drums in the 5th grade, my parents thought that it would stop me from using my fists with Debbie and that I’d go into the basement and bang out my aggressions on drum set. Instead, I now was weaponized and would respond to Debbie’s taunts by playing “Anagoddadivita” on her head.

As the years went by, Debbie changed her name to Devra, but it didn’t change her mean-spirited bullying. As now a Freshman in High School, I’d heard about 10 years of daily “Karissimo, Felissimo” and thousands of choruses of King of the Road. At that time,Dev had graduated college and was living back home, while her fiancé, Art was in culinary school. At 14, I became physically stronger than Dev and skyrocketed past her little person stature of 4’8″ to an ethnically challenged respectability of 5’1.” In Freshman English, we had to write a poem book with a representation of each type of poem from haiku to a sonnet to prose to a limerick. My bully, Devra, became my limerick’s muse using my nickname anagram for her, which is Derva. I named it “Beauty and the Beast” and limerick went like this-There once was a thing named Derva-She had a lot of Nerva-She’d push me around-Making grunting sounds-At restaurants, they wouldn’t serve her.

Not only had I become the family giant, but despite the endless teasing, I became able to usually outwit Dev with the exception of when I was high. On a regular basis, especially during high school sports off-season, my friends and I would head to my house afterschool to hang out, eat bagels, and smoke some weed. As Dev’s move back home; which kicked me out of my bedroom downstairs adjacent to the kitchen. My friends and I would tend to hang out in the kitchen or what became her bedroom in the hope. I preferred her bedroom in the hopes that one of my friends might fart on her pillow. One time, after smoking a few bowls and craving more than the usual bagels, my friend, Carol, found a tray of Sara Lee brownies that Dev bought for herself in the refrigerator. When she left for work that day, Dev threatened Lauren and me to not eat the brownies or else. Even without being high, those brownies looked great in their shiny foil package. As we hung out in Dev’s room, I heard Sara Lee calling me to enjoy her fudgie goodness. As my friends and I contemplated deep things like knowing that we are mere specks and that we are only the size of a fingernail compared to the Universe, which made us go, Whoa! what if a whole universe lives on our fingernails, Sara Lee kept calling to me with her icing stare through the refrigerator door. Finally, I went into the fridge to cave into that little seductress. When I pulled the brownies out, Liz screamed, “Don’t do it! They’re Dev’s.” I shrugged it off saying, “Please, I’ve been dominating her for years.” Carol and Lorraine who had major munchies chimed in with a chorus of things like, “You can take her. C’mon she’s bona fide midget. Let’s have the brownies, etc” I peeled back the foil lid and cut the tray in fours giving a quarter to each of them. We devoured the brownies icing and all. Next, we heard the click of the monsters key in the front door. We all ran into the kitchen, so Dev wouldn’t know we sitting on her pillows and going through her drawers. Stoned, Liz was hyperventilating at the thought of the Trililliputian of Terror discovering her brownies were no more. Dev grunted at us, as she moved towards the refrigerator. Immediately, she started moving things around in the fridge screaming, “Where are my brownies?” She slammed the door to the refrigerator and glared at us yelling, “Did you eat my brownies?” In unison, we all sheepishly answered, “No,” as Dev saw the telltale icing on our collective faces. Dev came running at me and started pulling at my hair. We tumbled through the hall into the living room with me addled by the pot and with Sarah Lee weighting me down giving her the advantage. My wasted friends just watched as if they were seeing Bugs Bunny in a dust up with Elmer Fudd and laughed their stoner laughs. As she pinned me, she threw in a “Karissmo, Felissimo” and a chorus of “Trailer for Sale or Rent.” Perhaps she had a moment of self-reflection realizing that at 22 and with her wedding on the way that I deserved those brownies for the last 10 years of her bullying.

In a related story, whenever Dev now visits, she brings brownies. As much as I hate to admit it, Sara Lee has nothing on my bully. That’s going to be a lot of brownies to pay for those reparations.