My Last Transmission

By Samantha Sims

After 17 years of a 25 year career as an Air Traffic Controller, Samantha Sims was working an aircraft that suffered loss of control from entering a thunder storm she adamantly advised the pilot to avoid. Understandably, Samantha was shaken up from this experience, but she could not have foreseen how the loss of this pilots life was going to save hers. Contacted that evening by a coworker and advised to seek help from Dr. Beecham to re-earn her medical certification to return to work, she was blindsided by what the Psychologist said to her in their first meeting, As he shook her hand Dr. Beecham said, ”It is a pleasure to meet the infamous Samantha Sims. Do you ever feel paranoid at work?” “Yes,” she replied. “Well, don’t ever lose that feeling. I can’t give you names, dates, times or places, but they have beat the crap out of you in there.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728320052

Samantha Sims

Samantha Sims’ many accomplishments in life go on for pages. An overachiever that took on challenges with full confidence. She encountered her biggest obstacle when she became an Air Traffic Controller. She thought she was doing it the right way by going to the union when she was having difficulty with coworkers. As the harassment intensified, she was informed by a former facility union president, “You are never going to have a safe place to work because the union will always protect the harasser, and you definitely have a target on your back.” Samantha quickly learned that standing up for herself meant having to go it alone. Even after settling her EEOC case out of court with the FAA, she was physically and emotionally attack by her coworkers until she was ordered to work from home for the last year and nine months of her career until her forced retirement in 2014. In her story, Samantha Sims dramatically conveys the emotional stress one endures when they walk the path of a whistleblower.

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© 2019 Samantha Sims. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/17/2019

ISBN: 978-1-7283-2006-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-2004-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-2005-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019916410

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

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CHAPTER 1

Wow. I don’t know where to begin? the FAA special agent said to his partner as he sat at the end of the table with his arms framing the seven-page statement I had just been sworn in to sign.

To gain clarification, I asked, What do you mean?

The FAA special agent said, I don’t know where to begin my investigation: the EEO system that completely failed you, the union in bed with management, or the misuse of authority by management itself?

Three days after speaking with the FAA special agents, my Washington-assigned liaison called me on his way to a meeting in Washington, DC, about one of the many things I had brought to light. He said, Samantha, I am so sorry. We are finding out that you are not alone. We are finding out that what happened to you is rampant at all the facilities nationwide. There are things I can tell you and things I can’t, but I can tell you there are major changes in procedures coming because of what happened to you.

I thanked him, and big, hot tears began to roll down my face as I hung up the phone.

An article published by abcnews.go.com called Pushing Boundaries While ‘Pushing Tin’ by Jake Tapper and Avery Miller on February 16, 2006,¹ highlights alleged rampant sexual harassment in the high-pressure, high-stress, and very male environment. A female controller recalled that walking through her facility was like walking a gauntlet of looks and comments, creating an intimidating environment.

During an interview on 20/20 in 1994, another female controller said, So I’m sitting there, working very heavy traffic, and suddenly, I feel a hand—not on my thigh, right in my crotch. Around February 10, 2006, at an airport, a female controller—fed up with a general culture of hostility and supervisors she deemed emotionally abusive—quit her job.

It used to make me laugh every time I saw an FAA spokesperson on the TV saying, Safety was never compromised.

In 2002, three women at an air traffic control center filed complaints. All three women alleged the harassment got worse after they complained. According to an internal survey of women in the FAA in 2003, that number was 14 percent. The FAA stopped asking female employees if they had been sexually harassed in its 2005 survey.

The 2006 executive vice president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association said,

The problem is that from the administrator on down they’ve created an environment of employee intimidation and employee harassment. When the administrator says, No matter what you do there will be no consequences. We will defend your actions. We will condone it. This creates that culture where those that would abuse women in the workplace have safe haven to do so.

At the time of this interview in 2006, the air traffic controllers’ union was in the midst of heated renegotiations with the FAA, and the union complained that the environment was the fault of supervisors and the organization. I felt the union left out of the interview how they were protecting their bargaining unit employees from disciplinary action. The union-dues-paying harasser got full protection, and the harassed were left hanging out to dry if the local union representatives did not like you. The article said, Aviation experts caution that supervisors and the FAA management are not the only ones responsible—that controllers in the union have also been a problem.

A female controller at an airport said she watched two controllers play a game of chicken with a pair of jetliners—while a supervisor laughed. She tried to work within the FAA system just as I had. When her complaints were ignored, she went public—just as I had. Her allegations that near-misses were prevalent was vindicated by a special counsel investigation, but she said, at the time, there was no investigation into the overall hostile work environment.

Another female controller complained to the EEOC about tampons scattered in her locker, job discrimination, and a threatening letter containing obscene and sexist language. The EEOC ruled that she was subjected to sex-based harassment and that the incidents were sufficiently severe or pervasive to create a hostile work environment. In 2004, the EEOC ruled against the FAA, saying, The agency failed to prove that it took appropriate corrective action.

Another female controller was verbally abused by a male supervisor who was defended by the FAA. In a phone conversation her father, she recalled how it got so stressful that the woman—who was described as very strong—changed and eventually took her own life.

The day that she took it, she’d had an extremely stressful night at work, her father said. They had a meeting in the morning, and they did not seem to give her any backup at all in what had happened. And she walked off the job, and that was the last anyone ever talked to her.

Posthumously, the EEOC found in her favor and against the FAA. The FAA said that supervisor was disciplined and moved to a nonsupervisory job, but he continues to work for the FAA. At the conclusion of the article, the FAA said they have instituted new programs to eliminate such problems. This article was printed in 2006, and here we are in 2014, with pretty much the same.

Let us look at the union-praised whistle-blower. If the union officials had really wanted to protect her, she would not have had to leave the FAA with a damaged career or sued the FAA in civilian court for almost $1 million.

Then look at the woman who won her EEO case postmortem, having committed suicide from the mental terrorism she was enduring. Her case information reads as such: Gender Discrimination: Harassment. Complainant, an Air Traffic Controller (ATC) alleged discriminatory harassment, including a suspension, based on sex (female).

The commission found that the AJ’s findings of fact were supported by substantial evidence, which demonstrated that the complainant’s supervisor exhibited gender bias. There was testimonial evidence from other air traffic controllers that the supervisor made derogatory comments about complainant and other female ATCs and referred to complainant in sexist terms. The agency was ordered to provide back pay, restore leave usage, and pay attorney’s fees to the estate.²

A former NATCA union national president was sued for slander because his blog mentioned the supervisor in an unflattering light. The NATCA union voted and agreed to pay for some of his legal fees to fight the slander suit.

I had to go see FAA special agents at FAA headquarters from October 29 until November 1, 2012. I said, I blame the union at least 70 percent for my situation. I was paying dues, and they were fighting harder to protect the harassers than they were fighting to protect me.

I won my EEO case in an out-of-court settlement on June 10, 2011. I had to withdraw my claim to get some of what I wanted for restitution.

The FAA agreed to my promotion to a staff specialist until my mandatory retirement on September 30, 2014.

When I returned to work on June 13, 2011 I was handed a memo that stated, Granted assignment to a Staff Specialist for forty-five days only.

At that time, I would be ordered back to the control room and would have to take annual leave, sick leave, or leave without pay if I have not obtained medical clearance to return to controlling airplanes by then.

When I informed the manager on June 13, 2011, about the agreement made the Friday before, he said, I don’t know anything about that. That was the routine response I got from every manager at the center every time I mentioned my case in any way, shape, or form. I believe their goal was to cause me more stress by dragging out the execution of the settlement. At the same time, they were telling me at work they had not received official notification of my new assignment—and that I was going on forced leave after the forty-five days of extra duty expired.

They placed me in the corner cubicle next to two managers’ office doors. The young man in the cubicle in front of me had spent time in the marines. It felt like he was my bodyguard. I am sure they all were quite nervous, and I was too.

My first week back was full of drama. They dumped my FAA email password a couple of times each day, which meant I couldn’t log into my computer and had to spin my wheels on the phone a couple of times a day with the FAA IT people to reinstate my password. The computer I had to use when I could log in would not allow me to get to my personal email, which forced me to have to go downstairs to the rooms that were set up for us to use during our breaks to surf the internet.

During one of those trips, I ended up in a room with a woman I had worked with since 1990. During all those years we had been at the air route traffic control center, we had only spoken occasionally because we were in different areas with different days off.

She had been at the speedway when I was participating in a sport bike track time event on my 2005 CBR600RR. She had been there to watch her husband’s cousin’s ride. We began to talk about my current situation. She said, I hated you for airing our dirty laundry.

I told her about a few of the things that forced me to go along with my lawyer’s request to do the interviews.

She said, I’m not mad at you anymore, but be prepared that the day you retire for people to tell you to go fuck yourself.

I was an air traffic controller from 1990 until 2014. The facility has approximately four hundred controllers and all the support personnel to run everything else. There are more than twenty of these facilities in the US Airspace System, which are almost exactly alike, and they oversee the National Airspace System (NAS).

When I would tell people I was an air traffic controller, they would sometimes respond, Oh, you’re the one at the airport with the orange batons guiding the airplane up to the gate.

I always laughed and said, No, here is your air traffic lesson of the day. The towers you see at the airport work you on and off the ground. The airspace they work looks like an upside-down wedding cake. As you are about to leave the tower’s airspace, they hand you off to us at the center. The center controllers keep you separated from everyone else flying from A to B.

Everyone knows that the airlines hub their flights, meaning they schedule arrivals and departures at the same time. That is why the center’s job is slightly more stressful than the tower’s job. This is true with smaller airports, but in my early days as a controller-in-training, we went to an executive airport for a tour of the operation to allow us to see what they do in conjunction with what we would be doing.

On that day, there was just one woman working in the glass-windowed tower. It really did not seem to be very busy, which is probably why we went there and not to the area’s main airport tower since we were a large group. Not long after we arrived and introduced ourselves, the woman controller was clearing a small plane for takeoff when a primarily non-English-speaking pilot in a helicopter asked for permission to cross over the top of the airport. The controller clearly told the helicopter pilot permission was granted to cross after the small airplane had departed.

As I watched out the tower cab window, I could see the helicopter flying parallel to the right of the runway, leading away from the tower cab, as the small plane was making its departure roll down the runway in the same direction. As the small plane lifted off the ground, the helicopter cut hard left to cross over the top of the runway on a direct path with the departing aircraft.

A feeling of dread overwhelmed me, a rush of adrenaline engulfed my body, and my anxiety rose. Had the small plane not reacted as quickly as it did by going to full power, putting the nose of the airplane almost straight up, the two aircraft would have collided.

The helicopter passed right next to the wheels of the aircraft, and the controller got on the radio with the helicopter pilot and sternly advised him of his mistake. She then calmly thanked the pilot of the small plane for being so quick to act. The small plane took a nosedive to regain the lift it needed under its wings to stay in the air and continue on its way.

On that day, I decided I did not want to work at an airport. I would be quite happy looking at my little green blips on the radar screen and keeping them five miles and a thousand feet or two thousand feet apart.

When I am working your flight as you depart, I must keep you separated from all the other flights that are taking off—along with all the other airplanes that are already under my control. The center’s airspace is broken up into sectors with their own frequencies. The sectors are grouped into areas that are assigned a set group of controllers who are required to keep currency on those sectors. To keep the flow of traffic safe, there are airways set up all through the airspace for routine flight paths.

My job gets stressful when you and everyone else flying approach your destinations at the same time. I must take all the different types of airplanes, get them descended, slowed, and in trail, and then hand them off to the approach control, which is responsible for your destination airport. I’m responsible for the start of that nicely spaced-out line of airplanes you see coming in to land at the airport.

The following is a very condensed replay of my world. I start with the things from my childhood that I feel are pertinent to my story, which leads up to a journal-like replay of my last few years in the FAA. The main reason for this book is for the people who have supported me and been positive influences in my world to get the full picture. I want those who are still in the FAA—and enduring this same situation—to see what to do and to learn from my mistakes and missteps to help them improve the quality of their lives.

Just a note to the FAA special agents: I was not told why I was being sent to headquarters when I came to meet you two. You can use this to supplement the statement I gave you because this book comes directly from the journals, paperwork, notes, and calendars I kept over the years. The information I gave you was only from memory—not Memorex. This is not everything because my publisher asked me to keep it brief for readability and to change the names of the players for liability reasons.

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CHAPTER 2

I am a silly girl with silly dreams. I wanted to marry Speed Racer. I wanted a husband, a couple of kids, and a house in a wonderful neighborhood where we could have our friends over with their kids for backyard BBQs with Sunday Football on the TV while watching our kids grow up together as a great big happy group.

My father raised me to be furiously independent. I would be sent off to face what the world was going to hand me with my father’s words ringing in my ears: Go get ’em, Tiger! He would pat the back of my head as I ran off to do my mischief.

I was one of five white kids in elementary school as far as I can remember. The saddest memory is having a fur hat with matching fur pompoms at the ends of the tie strings stolen from me. I was about seven years old, and I had just gotten it for Christmas. As I was sitting on the toilet in the school bathroom at the end of the day, someone reached over the top of the door and grabbed my hat. Poof! As quick as that, my hat was gone. From that day forward, I never again put anything over the top of the door that I do not want taken away from me.

Our neighbors on the corner were Bill and Amanda. He was a bus driver, and she was a stay-at-home wife. They never had children of their own. Bill was an incredibly funny man. He was meticulous about his yard. After standing and admiring the day’s effort making his yard look beautiful, my father stuck a dandelion in the yard a couple of feet from the sidewalk. Later, as they were all sitting on Bill’s front porch, he saw the pretty yellow flower. They thought he was going to have a heart attack as he yelled, Where the hell did that weed come from?

My father never pranked Bill again—at least not with his yard.

My father flew my best friend, Linda, in for my fifteenth birthday in 1979. We took Linda to meet Bill and Amanda, and that was the last time I ever saw them.

Bill got the giggles from telling Linda the story about me with a snake. My mother has a green thumb, and I could end the life of a plastic plant. As I was gardening in the yard with Mom, I became comfortable with the bugs and worms. If a critter crossed my path, I would give it a chance or two to move on. If it continued to pester me and could inflict pain via a bite or sting, I would kill it.

Bill said, Samantha was playing in the backyard. She loved being up in that tree. She would just sit up there for hours watching the world go by. She saw something move on the ground and yelled out as she is climbing down, ‘Big worm, Bill! Big worm!’ I looked over to where she was pointing, and she was all excited about a small snake. I tried to get there first and yelled, ‘No, Samantha Sue! Snake! That’s not a worm.’ She kept yelling, ‘Big worm, Bill. Big worm!’ She was just as excited as could be, and I knew she wanted to pick it up and play with it. I get to the hedge just as she does. Out of breath, I said, ‘No big worm. Snake, Samantha Sue!’ She got a sad face as she kneeled down near it and said, ‘No big worm?’

If you have ever seen an arrow with a real razor-edged tip, you will understand my dad going ballistic over the boys who lived in the house behind ours. I was on the swing set, which was partially blocked by the garage back by mom’s garden, when an arrow came flying across the fence. After being escorted by the police to and from their front door—where I am sure a threat was made—my father placed that arrow on top of the refrigerator. I just stood there, stared up at it, and thought about how pretty the metal tip was with its edging and cutout work—and how sharp those edges were!

One day, the plumber had to unclog the drain in the middle of the laundry/washroom floor at the back of the house, which was where I would put the remainder of my bologna sandwiches when I did not want to finish them.

My brother had a smirk on his face and was probably thinking, You’re busted now!

I was trying not to look scared, but I was nervous.

The plumber ran his snake down the drain and discovered it was blocked by something. When all that came up were wooden blocks, which my brother had dropped down there trying to get me caught, I made sure no one was looking and stuck my tongue out at him.

My father went from pumping gas and hustling pool for money to buy my diapers to becoming a self-taught draftsman/engineer. He took a new job in the middle of my second-grade year, and we moved to another city. My teacher was very nice, and she made tapes for me to listen to, which helped me read and say the words correctly.

The teacher would go over words with the class one day a week by writing a word on the chalkboard and calling on a student to use it in a sentence. The teacher wrote word on the chalkboard. I was trying to sound it out, but for the life of me, I could not figure it out. Terror set in, and a panic attack ensued when I saw her looking at me.

She called my name, and I froze. She said, Go ahead, Samantha. Use it in a sentence.

I took a deep breath and prepared for the forthcoming humiliation. I said, I don’t know what that word is.

The teacher must have put together the face, the sound of my words, and the actual sentence I used. She quickly figured out I really meant I had no clue to what that word was. She said, Very good, and she tried to move on.

That was when dummy me piped back up. I don’t know what that word is.

The teacher again put her hands up and said, Yes, Samantha, that’s very good usage of that word.

Then the light bulb came on. I saw the teacher light up with a smile as I realized what had happened. The word was word.

The only bad thing that happened there was when the boy who lived across the street got mad at me one day and hit me in the back with a croquet mallet. It hurt so bad that I dropped to my knees in the middle of the street. I am sure I never talked to him again.

At the end of second grade, we moved to another city. That was where I really began to feel the effects of bullies. We lived on the edge of the rich part of town. You knew you were on the poor side of town if you still had telephone poles in your yard. Aside from the money thing, I never could figure out why the other children picked on me. It was more than just the normal teasing in the lunch line that I was still flat-chested in the sixth grade. It was hurtful stuff like trying to rip my clothes off behind the bushes at the school after just coming to my house, claiming to be my friend, and wanting to hang out across the street at the school playground as Kevin and Mike had done.

They say things happen for a reason. I just want to know what I did in a former life that makes this one have to be so not boring! I remember Kevin staying in at recess with Cindy to work on classroom decorations. Kevin never volunteered for anything. I knew something was up when I saw him smiling at me as I walked out the door with the rest of the class to go out to the playground. I did not enjoy recess since Kevin was in there practically alone. I knew he was up to something. That was the first time I learned to trust those feelings.

When the class returned from recess and was beginning a new assignment, Tammy freaked out when she opened her desk and discovered her check for skating lessons after school with the Girl Scout troop was missing. I looked over at Kevin instantly, and he was sitting proud and tall at his desk, smiling as if he was just so proud of himself.

Kevin was one of those boys who tried to rip off my clothes, but I never told anyone because I thought I was the one who did something wrong.

The teacher asked everyone to open their desks, and I was not surprised to see the check sitting right there on top of the supplies in my desk. I wondered if Cindy knew too since she stayed in at recess with Kevin. With all the mayhem of Tammy crying that her mother was not going to understand and would be furious, I got rid of that check. I took it in my hand and very carefully made as if I was leaning back and slid the check into the desk behind me.

Again, the teacher insisted we all check our desks one more time. Kevin was so surprised when it was found in the other boy’s desk. I returned his shocked look with a smile that said, You missed.

Kevin recently sent me a friend request, claiming to be a born-again Christian. He wrote, Do I know you?

I felt perplexed until I went through his profile and finally decided I didn’t want to share my world with him.

Cindy was the girl I let win the intermural sports tournament. She knew I let her win too. I was tired of all the meanness the other girls inflicted on me throughout the intermural program. Until that game with Cindy, I was undefeated. I was verbally tormented in the girls’ locker room since the girls knew no one else was around to hear. It wasn’t monitored by a teacher. I let them win, and I let them get to me. After that, I even used my bad knees to get me out of gym class altogether.

I endured a lot of bullying and meanness from third grade until seventh grade. I know now that it was not my fault. During this time, I remember admiring Shirley Muldowney, Evil Knievel, Gloria Steinem, Emerson Fittipaldi, and Speed Racer. I knew Speed Racer was not real, but I was going to grow up to marry him one day. Silly girl with silly dreams; instead, I grew up to be Speed Racerette.

I feel that one of the reasons for my social awkwardness was because I spent my time being training by my dad and professional coaches to be a professional bowler. I have always been naturally athletic, but I was doing something that kept me out of the social realm of the kids I was supposed to grow up with. Instead, I became familiar with the environment of the adult-scene bowling leagues while hanging out with my dad.

I did not grow up to become the professional bowler my father hoped for. I had the talent, but I did not have the drive to push on. Dad had me practice at a bowling alley across town where two women from the WPBA hung out. I remember seeing them standing there on the concourse, talking with my father, and watching me. I must have had a good rhythm going with light oil on the lane because dad said I was throwing thunder—and the pocket would just explode on every ball. One of the women asked my father how old I was.

Sixteen, he said.

The two women looked at each other as if I was going to be a force to be reckoned with when I hit the tour.

They did not have anything to fear. Distracted by boys and the small thing of never really being able to bowl for fun, I gave up bowling when I graduated high school.

Dad came home one day after I had stopped bowling, took his position in his leather recliner at the end of the workday, and said, Don’t think you’re living here past twenty-one.

I was always interested in cars and racing. I did not learn until a few years ago that my father was the 1963 Automatic Competition Stock Drag Racing Champion of Missouri in a 1958 Edsel. I was born in 1964. We can all pretty much figure out what put the end to the racing career. It is not cheap—even if you know how to fix a car. My father said he showed up with the Edsel, and they all laughed at him and the car. Dad said their laughter made him so mad he spent every penny he had to build up the car to win that championship. Poor Edsel—we kept that car until we moved in 1976. The Edsel was sold to a person who I think used it in a derby. Yep, the smash-your-car-up type of derby.

My interest in cars at the time was only openly praised by the auto shop teacher in high school. I was the first girl to take auto shop, and it did not go over well. I was invading the boys’ realm. The boys in my class copied my work assignments, and someone wrote Rag in my yearbook when we passed them around at the end of the year. My senior year auto shop class was to be a two-hour hands-on auto tech class that I would have loved, but I was afraid to take it. I could feel the boys’ disapproval of the idea of me being in that class when the teacher discussed it. The shop teacher said he would look out for me, but I did not want something bad to happen to others or me. I really did believe they would sabotage things in the garage, which could have gotten people hurt, mainly me.

I’m not sure what his motive was, but my dad took apart the top of the Edsel engine and laid all the parts out on a sheet under the carport. No one touched it for a week. One day, I was bored since I did not have the boy up the street trying to run me over with his bicycle. I would run away as he chased me, but it was not for fun. One day, I decided not to run anymore and just stopped dead in my tracks. I couldn’t stop laughing when the boy went end over end trying not to hit me.

Why did you stop? he yelled at me from the ground.

Because I’m not running away from you anymore. As I walked into my house, I felt so proud. I started putting together the carburetor that afternoon.

At dinner that night, my dad asked, Who played with the parts?

I thought a grounding was coming when I said, Me.

Not another word was said, and Dad put the car back together alone. All I knew was he had a trophy in the living room with a car on top. If anyone still has the Hot Rod magazine from the summer of 1963, I would love to see the article about my dad and the Edsel.

The racing bug has always been inside me. I would get up early to watch racing on the weekends while everyone slept in—unless Dad was doing his bills and listening to the same Slim Whitman eight-track tape repeatedly. Imagine the laughter that came out of me at the theater when that was what killed the aliens in the movie Mars Attacks!

Dad always watched drag racing. It was like church on Sunday for him. I remember watching Shirley Muldowney and thinking, Wow, a woman winning in a man’s world!

When the feminist movement was taking flight, I was a huge fan of Gloria Steinem. People who admire her who have not walked that life have no idea what that woman risked by speaking out. Kudos to you, Gloria! I experienced real fear and her fear had to be on a much grander level than what I felt. Either way, I felt real fear while I was fighting the FAA and my union.

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CHAPTER 3

I remember vividly crying myself to sleep at night, thinking I would be okay with not waking up in the morning from all the bullying at school I was enduring. I did not want to spend one more day with those mean kids. I eventually began telling myself that I just had to hold it together until I graduated—and then I would never have to be around those mean people again.

When my son started school, I said, Do not ever pick on someone because they are different, weird, or whatever. I do not ever want to hear about you badmouthing or being part of a group picking on anyone. If your friends start it and you do not want to ask them to stop for fear of them attacking you, you just walk away. And the bad kids who live in the neighborhood? Always be nice to them—but keep on walking.

When he came home from school the day of the Columbine incident, he said, Mom, is today why you always told me to never pick on anyone at school? There is a quiet kid at school who always wears gothic clothes, and they ordered him today to never wear that stuff to school again. I didn’t think that was right.

It’s not,

I said, but that is the knee-jerk reaction of the world. Let’s not worry about what got us here. Let’s just go after what looks the same.

After what I endured, I decided I was not going to let my child live with the same harassment. You cannot protect them from everything, but I gave it one hell of a fight. One day when I was picking up the boys after school from middle school, my son got into the car and was very quiet.

I made him look at me.

He had a welt the size of a quarter less than an inch below his right eye. Aaron instantly piped up from the backseat, There’s a kid by the bridge popping people with a rubber band.

I left the car running and said, Keep put and keep the doors locked. I’ll be right back.

I had my son take me to where it happened and the boy was still there! I walked up to him and said, Why did you hit my son in the face with that rubber band?

He walked into it. I didn’t hit him, the arrogant little punk replied.

I said, You have two choices: go with me to the school, and we tell the office what you were doing—or I call the police and file an assault charge against you. Yeah, you are probably going to get off with a slap on the wrist by the courts, but I am going to make your parents’ life hell for a little while. Your choice—what are we going to do?

I could see my son was freaking out. He was probably thinking, Oh God, Mom, you’re going to get my ass beat to a pulp tomorrow for this.

As we were about to turn the corner to the front of the school, I turned on a dime got about six inches from the kid’s face, and said, As of right now, this is no longer between you and my son. This is now between you and me for hurting my child. Even if you go to the office, if I hear of any retaliation, I am going to be all over your world like a bad dream. Do you understand?

The kid just nodded his head.

The office said, We can’t do anything because it didn’t happen on school grounds.

I was between midnight shifts as a controller, and my fuse was short. I said, Let me get this straight. I’m teaching my child to be accountable for his actions, but what you’re telling him here today is if he does it across some line, no one cares?

They finally agreed to at least call the parents. Thank you! The rubber band only missed my child’s eyeball by an inch! Moreover, it was one of those super-duper, half-inch-wide, and six-inch-long ones.

The next day, my son came home with a smile. Believe me when I say I was waiting for the phone to ring all day. You know, Mom, after what you did yesterday, I thought I was going to be dead meat at school today—but that kid told all his friends, ‘You know that kid? Don’t touch him! His mom is psycho!’

We both laughed, and I sighed in relief.

I am not perfect, but I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt until they really cross me. My son cracked his elbow, and after the emergency room visit, we went to the doctor to get his cast. While I was filling out the paperwork at the counter, an older man went up to the receptionist to complain about the wait.

She said, Sir, I’m sorry for the wait, but we have a lot of ER follow-up appointments today. If you’d like to reschedule, I’d be happy to do that if you can’t wait any longer today.

He proceeded to belittle that young woman with his tone and displeasure.

I cut in and said, Sir, she said if you can’t wait any longer, she would be glad to reschedule your appointment. I’m sorry my son’s broken arm is interfering with your visit.

You need to mind your own business! What concern of this is yours? the elder man said.

It is totally my concern. If I let you continue being rude and disrespectful to this young woman, I am letting my son think this is acceptable behavior. So, I think you should reschedule your appointment or have a seat and wait like the rest of us,

I replied.

He snorted, said, Well, I never, and walked back to his seat. He and an elder woman began to make