The Revealing Incident

The day after the meeting, is when the answers to the questions started to come.

This was the account of others who had witnessed it. At lunch recess "Joe" climbed up the slide to search for his friend. Other kids were waiting to go down and kept telling him he needed to move. Kids were messing with his shoes and one came off. Another boy, who we'll call "Dave", grabbed it, went down the slide and starting running around. "Joe" chased after "Dave" and when he caught up to him, he put him in a choke hold.

When recess was over, the kids had a few minutes to go to the bathroom before returning to class. Beckham walked into the bathroom only to see "Joe" hitting and kicking "Dave". Beckham told him to stop and that it wasn't right, but it didn't stop and it continued back to the classroom. Once class had resumed, the parent volunteer told the kids to get their projects. It was teacher appreciation week and the all teachers were in a meeting, so there were parent volunteers in each class. As the kids went to get their projects, Beckham accidentally bumped into "Joe" and immediately apologized. "Joe" then put Beckham into a choke hold. Three kids tried to pull "Joe" off, but it took the parent volunteer to get him off. This is where Beckham thought, "I'm trying to be brave and not cry."

The parent volunteer took them to the Principal's office. The principal talked to Beckham first. Ryan arrived and took Beckham home. The principal then talked to "Joe". Ryan called Marna to tell her what had happened. She immediately called the school and talked with the parent volunteer that had witnessed it. The parent volunteer was very upset and said she'd never seen anything like that before. Both she and Marna were concerned about Beckham and about "Joe" and what was going on in his life for him to act this way and to use the physical abuse that he did. When Marna went to pick Beckham's little sister up later that day, she went to talk to the principal; she was concerned and wanted to know more about the situation.

The principal told Marna that he had talked to both boys and some student witnesses. It is our understanding that when the principal asked "Joe" what happened, he told the principal his dad had taught him to protect himself and that he had attacked "Dave" durning recess and put Beckham in a choke hold. The principal also told Marna that he had called "Joe's" dad and talked to him. He told his dad what had happened and that he needed to talk to his son. "Joe's" dad said he'd talk to him when he got home.

Once Marna left the school, she went home and asked Beckham all about it. He told her the story that I've told. She asked him how long the bullying had been going on. He said without hesitation, "a year and six and a half months." Knowing he had been keeping track of how long this had been going on just made Marna's heart sink and made her wonder how he kept it a secret and how she could've missed it. She kept asking herself, "how did I not know?"