Harold Girard
My first hero was my school bus driver, Harold Girard. He taught me that the size of your body has nothing to do with the size of your future.
I was the smallest boy on the bus, and as such, the usual target of the bigger boys who bullied me every chance they got. I usually tried to sit up front near Mr. Girard because they would not pick on me when an adult was there. But too many times I was late getting in the bus line, or the bigger boys would crowd on ahead of me and take the front seats, so I had to sit in the back. And then, once the bus was moving, they’d come back and taunt me.
This went on for weeks, and with a bus load of kids to drive safely, Mr. Girard could not watch them to be sure they left me alone.
One day three of three of my tormentors were shoving me and calling me names, and suddenly the bus came to a stop and Mr. Girard stormed to the back, grabbed two of them by the collar and lifted them right off the ground and shook them like rag dolls.
“Okay, you’re bigger than Lonnie, and I’m bigger than you. Do you see how this works now? ” he said. “There will always be someone bigger than you! But guess what, there will always be somebody smarter than you too! Someday you goons will probably be working for a guy like Lonnie, so maybe you should stop being such jerks to him. Anybody can use muscles, but not everybody can use their brain.”
Then he said “I used to be just like you punks, picking on the smaller kids. See where it got me? I drive a bus, and today those kids sit in offices.”
For some reason the message sunk in and they left me alone after that. Maybe they were just afraid of Mr. Girard. But something else happened too. I had always seen myself as the wimp, the skinny little kid that got picked on. But suddenly I began to believe that someday I would be the target for everybody else. I’d sitting in an office or doing something better someday. My opinion of myself changed at ten years old.
Today I do sit in an office, and I oversee a workforce of over 200 people. I always wonder how many of them were the bullies on the bus and how many were the targets.
Submitted by Lonnie Chapman
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