Sometimes, reading my own paper isn’t easy. I come across articles dealing with everything from youth suicide and the problem of bullying that often leads to it and feel ashamed. So much so that it’s difficult to look myself in the mirror, literally.

You see, when I was a kid, I was a bully.

I probably made more grade schoolers than I’d like to recall question their own value and wonder what they did to evoke my often relentless derision. I’ve never been big by physical standards, but those who know me will attest that my wit is razor sharp. I say this not out of pride because it’s not always a good thing. Being so honed it has, can and still does cut.

Back in the day, it would do so deeply, and when my friends and I got angry or bored, instead of pushing kids around we’d simply be chopping them down. Living the life of the untouchable popular crowd as it were seemed fine at the time, but it retrospect, I wasn’t the kind of kid that I want my own son hanging out with when he enters grade school several years from now.

That’s a sad statement.

What I thought made me strong then was actually the weakest thing I could have done. How hard was it, after all, to fling cards in the faces of kids who already had the deck stacked against them? How difficult and empowering it would have been to take a stand in their defense instead.

What good I could have accomplished.

But instead, and while I was by no means a jerk all the time, I probably did more harm than good to those I knew in my youth. Especially those who least deserved it.

Sometimes I think about John Cronin. A name that no doubt means nothing to you but everything to me.

John was a nice guy, and a friend, but my friends and I still picked on him from time to time in seventh and eighth grade at St. Joseph’s. I sometimes wondered if we went too far “joshing around” on his account, or if we laid the groundwork that lowered his self-esteem to the point of no return.

After graduation we went our separate ways. For high school, I went to O’Dea. He went to Prep.

Freshman year, John left a few notes, locked himself in his family’s garage, turned on the car and slowly died.

I remember his funeral well. My former friends and classmates who used to occasionally harangue John being suddenly at a loss for words. I remember his parents crying. The blank look on his brother’s face. It was 20 years ago, but it was yesterday.

And whether I played a role in his death or am torturing myself needlessly, I will never know. I sincerely hope it’s the latter because if there is one thing I know for certain it’s that I deserve it.

JOE IRWIN

Editor