Today when I woke up I came downstairs and watched a recording of one of my favorite TV shows, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and it was surprisingly very good this week. It was about a family who lost a child to suicide because of bullying. I like the show because it is inspirational. During the show they talked to all kinds of people about bullying. They said that 160,000 kids in the U.S. stay home from school each day because of bullying. The kid was 11 years old and in 6th grade.

It was very hard to watch the show, but it was a very good one because it’s a big problem for a lot of people, and especially for people who have something different about them. If you have something about you that looks different, you know you will get bullied at some point in your life. As they said in the show, people get bullied for being too skinny, too fat, having a different hair color, not being smart or being way too smart. I think watching this episode could help people understand what’s going on in the world.

When I was in 4th grade I got bullied a lot because of my leg and all of my surgeries. For example, when I was trying to play with my friends during recess one day, they saw me walking toward them and then they started running away. I thought it was a game, and later I realized they were bullying me because I couldn’t run as fast as them so I’d never catch up. They never made fun of me, but they did make it so it was hard to have fun with them. Then there was one kid in 7th and 8th grade at my current school who would sometimes be nice to me but most of the time he was rude to me and very mean. He would only be nice to me if he wanted something from me or thought that I could do something for him. Whenever I tried talking to him, he would reply in  a nasty way. I told teachers and it sort of stopped, but not fully. And then he told other people and they asked me why I was telling on him because he was a really popular kid at my school. I told them it was none of their business. They didn’t ask again, but they did put rumors about me on Facebook. Everything is better now because all of those kids left and went to another school.

This episode of the show showed a website, www.standtogether.tv, for an organization called Stand Together that was  put up by Extreme Makeover to help people learn how to end bullying. I suggest you look at the website and see if you  want to join. I did and my picture and number is here. The website gives anyone who agrees to stand up to bullying a  number, and then you can take your picture with that number and upload it to the website. (parents permission required)  Maybe we can get Rick to join, too!