How can an aspie avoid bullying

This is a continual story. To read the first chapter, click here

"I want to learn self-defense." Gaby winced as the morning sunrays spilling in through the open shutters of the porch adjoining the living room scorched her bruised cheek.

"Girls don’t hit," her mother said.

"But I'll only protect…" Gaby started.

"Girls don’t hit." Her mother raised her voice. The sky was a rectangle of white glare outside the shutters, wrapping itself around the yellowing leaves of the palmtops.

"But it's dangerous for me to…" Gaby said.

"Girls don’t hit!" Her mother yelled and slammed her fist on the table. "And it's your fault you're being picked on because you're scared of those kids, and they can feel it." Construction workers shouted to each other down below, their rough, deep voices resonating in the street that was filling up with people and cars in the early morning hour.

"Stop upsetting your mother!" her father barked. "Respect your elders. All youths go through the adventure of physical assault. It's as much a part of life as constant pain is."

Gaby sighed. Most mammals liked teaching their cubs survival skills, like a mother cat teaching her kittens to hunt by letting them practice on her twitching tail. Only her parents were an exception.

"Those girls didn’t really hurt you," her mother said.

Gaby pointed at her face. "I've got dried blood on my lip."

"Where?" Her mother's expression was glazed and unfocused. A motorcycle roared in the road below.

"My eye is swollen." Sitting in the hot, humid living room was like being inside a washing machine in action.

"I don’t see anything." Her mother narrowed her eyes as if she were near-sighted. She wasn’t. "You don’t have to see those girls again if they're so reckless."

"They did it deliberately," Gaby stated.

"No, they didn’t." Her mother's voice was high-pitched and faraway. "It was an accident."

"They picked on me, and then they punched me again and again," Gaby said, although she knew it was useless to get an ostrich to get her head out of the sand.

"That's because it was an accident." Her mother stared into space with a confused expression. It occurred to Gaby only human suffered from the Stockholm syndrome. Other animals ran and fought, and if that didn’t help, they just died. Even the ostrich never pretended the lion wasn’t such a bad animal. It just pretended the enemy wasn’t there.

"Who's going to pay for it?" Her father fixed his turquoise eyes on hers, and Gaby turned her head away and looked at the crow sitting on one of the electric cables that stretched outside the porch, the bird's blackness a shocking contrast with the blue of the sky.

Her father said, "You don’t have a penny to your name. Never worked one day in your life, not even babysat. You don’t get an allowance. You don’t have two pennies to rub together." He got up and started pacing the living room, his fingers twitching, a minor version of the way Gaby flapped her fingers. Maybe it was something genetic.

"All your friends found summer jobs," her mother wailed. "What does it look like when you're the only girl who doesn’t join in the conversation when the girls laugh about their boss and the customers they dealt with. Do you know what it's like to have a kid who's different than the others? Why are you doing this to me, Gabriella?" Only two of Gaby's classmates had worked during the summer.

Gaby wished she could tell her parents that teaching someone how to defend himself was communicating to that person that he had the right to defend himself, that he was equal. Just telling someone this in words was meaningless. "I found this place on the Internet…" Gaby said.

"You found nothing!" her father exclaimed. He leaned across the table and stuck his face close to hers. Gaby recoiled as if bitten by a snake. "You can't ride a bike or lit a match. You couldn’t figure out that you had to turn your hand sideways to brush your teeth until third grade. You didn’t understand that the back of your hand should face the wall, not the ceiling. You have tried to brush your teeth with the toothbrush horizontally instead of vertically."

Her mother laughed hysterically, bending over, gasping and braying like a donkey. She went on and on until Gaby's father snapped at her, "Stop that noise, Linda." Turning to Gaby, he said, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks, Gabriella."

He stood, yawned, and stretched. "This conversation is a non-issue," he declared. "Linda, make me a sandwich with one tomato."

Gaby followed her mother into the kitchen. A pine stood unmoving outside the white-framed window. Her mother got a tomato out of the snow-colored refrigerator.

"Now that you're over eighteen, no one will ever pick on you again, Gabriella." Her mother dipped a sponge in dishwasher detergent and started scrubbing the tomato. "Bullying is something only kids do, and it's only done in school."

But Gaby had seen too many grown dogs fights to believe that. "I can get bullied on the job," she said.

"People never bully a coworker." Her mother washed the tomato under the faucet in a stream that sent vibrant golden sparks in the sunlight. "They get fired for this. No company can handle bullying on the job, scares away the customers."

Gaby gazed out the window, at the sign down the street that read 'Pharmacy'. Such a fluffy, sweet, and fulfilling word. Although not as fulfilling as the words she liked to read when she was hungry, words like 'deep' or 'heavy'. In a way, reading those words was even more satisfying than eating because they didn’t really make her hunger disappear. She said, "What about crime? I can get attacked on the street."

"Crime never happens in a good neighborhood such as ours." Her mother started cutting the tomato in neat slices on the cutting board. "It doesn’t exist."

"What about the man who got robbed and beaten half to death last summer down the block?" Gaby asked.

"When did that happen?" Her mother turned to stare at her with the expression of a person suffering from dementia. Sunlight painted the white walls golden better than any manmade color ever could.

"Put the ridiculous idea of learning self-defense out of your head." Her mother took the tomato to the yellow oak table. "You're five feet tall and weight ninety pounds. The bigger kids will hurt you, and you'll never learn anything anyway." She started cutting the rye bread with a large knife. Gaby wished she'd had that knife with her when the two predators attacked her.

Gaby knew her mother was right, though. She weighted so little that she always pulled herself up with one hand on the monkey bars twenty five times in a row, fast and easy. "Are you sure it'll never happen again, Mom?" she asked, wanting her mother to convince her, wanting to believe that no one will make her feel so helpless again, like a toy. That people wouldn’t have power over her again.

"Of course, Gabriella." Her mother's voice was confident and smooth, making her sleepy. "You'll see I'm right. I'm one hundred percent sure of it. I'm certain. No way will it ever happen again. I know what I'm saying, Gabriella. Trust me. I'm your mother. I know."

And Gaby knew if her mother kept talking, and if she sounded convincing enough, she'd believe her. 

This is a continual story. Next post will be published next Saturday. Hope you like it. Thanks for visiting this blog. If you liked it, share it.

Bullying is very common among us aspies. Here's a book that teaches you self-defense techniques in real life-threatening situations. The book 'When violence is the answer', written by an expert in close combat who'd trained elite military forces. Click to view