Mitt Romney is either a bald-face liar or the most insensitive person on the face of the earth. You see, I know a little something about being a bully. 60 years ago, when I was an 11 year old 5th grader, I was a bully and to this day I cannot forget that incident nor the guilt it has carried with it.
We had a kid in our class named Eddie. Eddie was a very slight boy (not gay, BTW) who was extremely bright and came from an upscale family in the community. His father was the town’s leading surgeon and was a friend and colleague of my father, who was also a doctor. Eddie’s “mistake” was to go on a family vacation to Florida during the winter term and to come back to class with a sun tan. Because he had the audacity to take a week off during school time and showed up looking tan and healthy and acted a bit aloof and stand-offish, our little cadre of jealous 5th graders decided to teach him a lesion.
Our little group included me (later to become a doctor myself), David (who became an extremely wealthy corporate raider) and Ron (who became senior VP of a major bank).
Over the period of about one week, we constantly tormented Eddie, threatening him with physical harm and taunting him as a “sissy-boy.” Fortunately, we never caused him physical harm. Finally, Eddie’s father called on our parents which brought the bullying to a stop. And as kids are wont to do, we managed to put it behind us and continued through Jr. High School and High School without further incident. I later became friends with Eddie and collaborated with him on science projects and musical shows, etc, although we were never “best buddies.” Eddie went on to become a successful orthopedic surgeon. However, he never returned for any reunions.
Fifty years later, I ran into my co-conspirators, David and Ron, at a mini-reunion of our close cadre of school chums. We had not seen one another for at least 25 years. Within minutes of our get-together, talk turned to that one week in 1952 when we had bullied and terrorized Eddie. It turned out that none of us had forgotten that incident and we could vividly recall every detail. More importantly, it had remained, for each of us, a matter of great shame and invoked a sense of guilt that would just not go away.
I have lost touch with Eddie and hopefully he has gotten past that episode in his life. And to be truthful, I hadn’t though much about it lately until the Romney bullying event became news. And then, like a great flood of remorse and guilt, it all came back, in every sordid detail. So when Mitt Romney says he can’t really recall the incident or the specific details, I know he is either a bald-faced liar or the most insensitive person on the planet.