Author’s Notes: This be a wake-up call for anyone who's ever gone to school and picked on someone else, or talked about somebody behind their back. This is dedicated to everyone is strong enough to get up out of bed each morning and face the day and all the hell it brings, to everyone who's been picked on for being different, and for everyone who is brave enough to be themselves.

Sticks and Stones
By: The Gemini Sage

Do you think it’s funny?

I guess you do. You’re laughing, aren’t you? I guess you actually find this funny. I guess you think it’s amusing to stick your leg out in front of a kid and watch him trip and fall face-first in the mud, and to stand there and laugh while he gets up and looks at all his ruined stuff and runs away.

Somehow, I don’t think he’s as happy about this as you are.

I guess you think it’s okay to just lock somebody in a closet and leave them there for a few hours until the janitor gets back. Forget the fact that they could suffocate, forget the fact they could be scared, or even angry. they could be crying. But it doesn’t matter. You need a good laugh now and then.

I bet after being stuck in a closet for a few hours, they could use a good laugh too.

So a kid comes to school in an outfit that doesn’t match. So what? Big deal. Say a couple of things to him and let it slide. Thing is, all day everybody’s been saying things to him. In math class, one kid even threw gum in his hair. He failed a major test, and he had to get a stupid haircut, just to get the gum out.

And of course, nobody liked his haircut any more than they liked his clothes.

You probably thought his haircut was funny, too.

Big deal, most people say, some kids get picked on, some people are bullies. Nobody really got hurt.

Yeah, it is a big deal, though. Okay, fine. We’ll move it up a little. People can be hurt.

How funny is it when, for a good laugh, you push somebody down the bleachers at a football game? Pretty funny? I guess so. They hit the guy selling hot dogs and the mess goes everywhere. Yeah, go ahead and laugh. Then you can go call the hospital. Their leg is broken. They got hurt.

There’s more than one way to hurt a person. You don’t have to break their leg. Maybe the fat girl in gym could be stuffed into a bathroom stall and have all the other girls in the locker room bang on the walls for twenty solid minutes, gasping for air because they’re laughing so hard. It’s a lucky thing her bag is in there. She gets so stressed out she has an asthma attack right there in the stall. It musta been funny watching her dig around in her bag, fighting to breathe and crying like that. She nearly died. I guess dying could have hurt.

You could tell a girl that the star of the football team wants to ask her out. Of course, when she calls him, he turns her down and laughs, and she has to face everyone at school the next day. I’m sure she thought it was hilarious, especially the part where, after a day full of jokes and insults and tormenting, she has to cry herself to sleep that night. Crying takes a lot of work. If you cry too hard, you get sick. And she did. For an half an hour. I bet throwing up for thirty minutes hurt.

So what, you say, the leg will heal. She didn’t die. She’ll get another crush. It’s all in fun. They’re being wimps.

Yeah, it takes a real wimp to come back with a cast on their leg and still go to the next football game with their friend. It takes a real wimp to almost die in a bathroom stall and then go back the very next day to change into her gym clothes. It takes a real wimp to get out of bed in the morning and go to a place where they know people are going to make them miserable. It’s disgusting. Biggest bunch of cowards I ever met.

There’s still not a good reason to quit, you might say, they’ll be fine eventually, it was all replaceable. It’s not like anybody died. C’mon, it was funny!

Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is funny. I guess it was funny to be mean to a kid every day when he walked in the doors and not quitting until he walked out. I guess it was funny for trying to wear away his soul by chasing him down after school and taking turns to punch him mint he stomach. I guess it was funny leaving him tied to a tree afterschool and him having to spend the night there because he couldn’t get loose. I guess it was funny throwing rocks at his windows and breaking them. I’m sure it amusing when you put itching powder on his gym clothes and you chased him out of class, pretending you thought he had fleas. Yeah, a real riot .

You know what else was funny? It was funny that I had to watch him go through all that. Yeah, that was my big brother you were laughing at. It’s okay though, it was just for a good laugh .

I have to wonder if you were still laughing when my brother came to school with a gun .

Did you think it was funny when he put a bullet through your buddy’s head? Maybe you were smiling when he shot the gym teacher. I’ll bet it was real fun when your girlfriend got two bullets in her shoulder .

I don’t guess anyone was laughing then, huh? Why not? He’d cried before, when you threw rocks at his windows, and you laughed then. He cried when you punched him in the stomach, and you laughed then, too. He cried when you chased him out of class, and you just laughed.

He was crying when he shot your cousin death. What, didn’t you laugh then, too? Why not? He was crying. It must have been really, really funny .

You were crying when you had to dial nine-one-one, and my brother started running home. I guess you were laughing so hard you cried, it happens. That must have been it. After all, it was just so funny.

I guess it was funny when I came home from school that afternoon to see him laying there on the couch all covered with blood and holding that gun, with his head splattered all over the living room. I was there, and I can tell you exactly how funny it was .

Maybe you laughed when I screamed and ran outside. Maybe you called your friends to tell them how funny it was when they found me hours later hiding behind a dumpster in town, shaking and crying. Maybe it made into the joke books, about how I had nightmares and woke up screaming and sobbing and had to go to therapy that cost too much and didn’t help me forget the blood .

Strange, no one was laughing at his funeral. No one giggled when they cleaned up the blood from the house. No one nudged each other in the ribs when they read my brother’s suicide note. No one cracked a smile during the next few school days. But then again, with your source of entertainment gone, I guess you all must have been pretty bored .

Whoever made up that saying—the stupid one about sticks and stones—they were wrong, dead wrong. Words hurt. Words can be mean. And being mean isn’t funny. It isn’t cool, and it isn’t a joke. People don’t like being punched in the stomach, they don’t like being insulted, and they don’t like being made fun of. It’s not just a passing phase you go through. Everybody does it. And every insult you make is just one more tear they have to cry at night .

Trust me, it isn’t funny.

At least, my brother didn’t think so .

But I guess you never really cared about what my brother thought, did you?

AN: I would really appreciate comments on this--it is something I put a lot of emotion into, it came straight from my soul. It's also something that could be scarily real for some people, from the older brother who killed himself to the guy who picked on him, to the people who got shot, to the survivors, to the little sister who found her brother's body. I'd like some comments on it just to see what people think, and I'm just hoping that maybe in the future more people will ave second thoughts.

EDIT: I'd also like to note that this is NOT a true story--my bro didn't go to school with a gun, I dont have an older brother, and I've never seen anyone who shot themselves, all that good stuff. It was entirely fictional, to me. But for other people, it could be very real. I just wanted people to be aware of what happens in schools.