2008 - Secondary - Honorable Mention - Sariego

"Carrot top, Carrot top!" That's what the kids at my elementary school would chase me around and chant. I hated it, but I wasn't always bullied because of my hair color. Before I had moved to Colorado, people used to admire my hair and tell me how gorgeous the color was; but once we moved, all the kids in my grade teased me for my so called "carrot" colored hair. I even tried to dye it once, but the radiant blond it was supposed to be turned out as a frog green.

This summer would be different, though. I was insistent on not letting the kids bully me this year, especially since I was entering the sixth grade! My mom said that I had to volunteer at the local hospital to get the service hours I needed. The next day, at the hospital, I was guided into a room and told to cheer up the patient. I strode in, and to my horror, there lay a completely bald girl! She immediately looked up from the magazine she was reading and said, "Hey, my name is Alice."

She confronted me immediately about her disease, cancer. At first I was scared, but she assured me it was not contagious. Over the days I told her about how the kids at my school would always make fun of me about my hair. To my surprise, she laughed and said that that was nothing. She sighed and told me about how, when she had gone to school, the kids used to make fun of her for not having any hair. She would come home crying every day! We created a club called the Bully No More Club, where we would make each other feel better about the mean things people had said.

Over the years, Alice and I became best friends. I became more popular and confident in school, while she became weaker and weaker in the hospital. Eventually, Alice died. This was one of the saddest days of my life, but I could always remember what she had really taught me about getting past people’s looks and getting to know the real them. She also taught me confidence, and how to look past all those mean comments, and just be myself. Today I am older and wiser, but still whenever I hear a story of someone being bullied, it brings tears to my eyes. People, kids especially, don’t realize how one mean comment could really hurt a person on the inside and scar them forever.