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David Farmer lives in Portland. He wrote a weekly column for the Bangor Daily News for 11 years.
During the summer of the seventh grade, I was riding my bike with a friend in a neighborhood that wasn’t my own.
A kid I knew — a kid I was afraid of, if I’m honest — stopped us, pulled his bike up to mine, grabbed my handlebars with one hand and punched me right in the face. Out of the blue.
The shock. The fear. The pain. The uncertainty.
I’m bringing it up now, because I feel a similar way every morning when I read the newspaper. I’m shocked by the onslaught of actions by the Trump administration. I’m afraid for my trans and gay friends, and for trans kids I don’t know. I’m hurt for immigrant families and federal workers and farmers and businesses and schools who face the loss of promised federal dollars.
And I’m uncertain of what to do next. And that’s a familiar feeling.
It was my first fight way back then, if you could call it that.
Is it a fight if someone gives you a black eye and a bloody nose and you just stand there trying not to cry, scared out of your wits and not knowing what to do?
No.
I don’t remember the kid’s real name, but his nickname sticks: “Snake.”
When I got home, I got the third degree. First from mom: who, what, when? She was going to seek divine — or at the least, personal — retribution. Nobody was going to punch her son in the face and get away with it.
I refused to talk. I wasn’t a rat. I might have been a scared mouse, but I wasn’t a rat.
Like the cops in a police procedural, it didn’t matter what I said or didn’t say. Mom found out — she always found out.
Later, it was dad: What did you do? What happened next? That answer was easy. Nothing.
He wanted to know why I didn’t hit Snake back. Why didn’t I stand up for myself?
The answer was completely unsatisfying: I was scared, and I didn’t know what to do.
I was a tall, skinny, somewhat awkward kid in those in-between years of what’s now middle school. I had friends, but I was also bullied. The favorite insults were “gay” and “fa—ot,” but there were plenty of others.
I didn’t quite fit in. I was a little different. I was an easy target.
When school started back in the fall, Snake kept his distance. Whatever vengeance my mom had taken had left a mark. But his two sidekicks, they didn’t care.
They were relentless on the school bus. I was driven to the front seat, right behind the bus driver hoping for protection. It didn’t come. The two would sit behind me, taunting, flipping my ears, hitting, calling names — all the stupid stuff kids do to one another.
I’m not sure how long this went on — I can’t remember, and it hardly matters.
One day, for some reason, I just flipped out. I whirled around on the bus seat and turned into some sort of whirling dervish seeking power from a higher source, swinging wildly, spinning like a windmill in a windstorm. There was a lot of fury, but it wasn’t much of a fight.
As the initial flurry passed, I realized that I was about to get a really big butt kicking. I was probably going to be suspended from school. I’d take zeros in my classes. My grades! My perfect attendance!
I was going to pay a price.
That’s where we are right now in this country. The bullies have tremendous power. They’ve taken over the White House. They unleash mobs on trans kids on the internet. They’re firing park rangers who keep us safe, and health care professionals who fight disease, and people who feed hungry kids.
Maybe you’re not trans. Maybe you don’t work for the feds. Maybe you’re worried about your mortgage and your retirement and just getting along with your life. But the thing about the brand of politicians like Donald Trump, the oligarch Elon Musk, the bully Laurel Libby — they’re going to follow you to the front of the bus.
When Gov. Janet Mills stood up to the bully in chief last week, she wasn’t frenetic or angry or afraid. She didn’t swing wildly. She was calm and stated the facts: Maine will follow federal and state law. The answer to her courage? Investigations. Threats. Social media attacks.
Cruelty. Meanness. Humiliation. Chaos. That’s the point of what they’re doing.
They’re going to keep coming until we decide — one at a time or altogether — that we’re willing to pay the personal price that standing up to a bully will cost.
I’m trying desperately to figure out how to be a political version of that whirling dervish I was as a skinny, scared kid.
