Stop Panicking About Bullies

Nick Gillespie:

"When I was younger," a remarkably self-assured, soft-spoken 15-year-old kid named Aaron tells the camera, "I suffered from bullying because of my lips--as you can see, they're kind of unusually large. So I would kind of get [called] 'Fish Lips'--things like that a lot--and my glasses too, I got those at an early age. That contributed. And the fact that my last name is Cheese didn't really help with the matter either. I would get [called] 'Cheeseburger,' 'Cheese Guy'--things like that, that weren't really very flattering. Just kind of making fun of my name--I'm a pretty sensitive kid, so I would have to fight back the tears when I was being called names."

It's hard not to be impressed with--and not to like--young Aaron Cheese. He is one of the kids featured in the new Cartoon Network special "Stop Bullying: Speak Up," which premiered last week and is available online. I myself am a former geekish, bespectacled child whose lips were a bit too full, and my first name (as other kids quickly discovered) rhymes with two of the most-popular slang terms for male genitalia, so I also identified with Mr. Cheese. My younger years were filled with precisely the sort of schoolyard taunts that he recounts; they led ultimately to at least one fistfight and a lot of sour moods on my part.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at April 3, 2012 3:51 AM
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