If you haven’t read the column by Charles Blow of the New York Times recently posted on October 14, please do so on an online edition of the Times. It is under the title “The Bleakness of the Bullied”.   Mr. Blow is a well respected columnist, regularly appearing on national television shows with comments on the daily life of this country’s politics and well being. It wasn’t always so.

 

                Mr. Blow recounts a time when he was very young, depressed, bullied by other young people around him and thinking of suicide. He was at a skating ring where the music was loud and people were moving fast around him, and he was just trying to hold on. He thought how unhappy he was, that he didn’t want to live and considered taking too many pills. Then, he remembered a song his mother had taught him, and he began to sing it to himself and pulled away from darkness.

 

                And now Mr. Blow writes about this time in his life. What a wonderful thing to do! In recent months, I have seen two news stories, one in the Winston-Salem Journal, and the other on the CBS Evening News. Both stories told of young people who were unhappy at school and bullied by their peers. One, a young girl from Forsyth County told no one, not even her closest friends how she felt. They didn’t know until her parents found her body in an upstairs bedroom one morning before school. The other national story was of a young boy who told his parents what was going on in his life, and he got help, and now is a happier well adjusted person.

 

                The difference in these two stories, at least to me, is that the openness, or lack thereof in each case. I think openness usually wins. What you can do, if you have children, is ask how they are doing and be mindful of their behavior. What you can do, if you have older friends, is the same.

 

                I believe that one of the best ways to find out about how someone is doing is to open up to that person your-self. That makes it easier for everyone to be honest. But this can be hard. Admitting our weaknesses isn’t for sissies. But the rewards can be priceless.

 

              

                Sometimes, I get the opportunity to do really special things. The first week in October was such a time when I was invited to speak in Annapolis, Maryland at the Governor Calvert House, a part of the Historic Inns of Annapolis, to the Local Insurance Government Trust which comprised representatives of local government from all over Maryland.

 

                I had never been to Annapolis, though I had heard much about it. The Governor Calvert House, where I both stayed and spoke, is right across the street from the Maryland State House, still a working state capitol where the Legislature regularly meets.

 

                The sidewalks and streets are all paved with brick, and if you go on a walking tour, in about three short blocks, you are on the edge of the Chesapeake Bay with the Naval Academy to your left.

 

                Dinner was held at another part of the Hotel complex in an old house that has in the basement a well known and rich in history restaurant called “The Treaty of Paris”. It is so named after the treaty that ended the Revolutionary War. Legend has it that in the afternoon at the close of the war, General George Washington resigned his commission, leading the war, in the state capitol, which was then the national capitol and walked the short distance to the restaurant now named after the famous treaty and proceeded to have dinner and have way to much to drink.

 

                For breakfast the next day there was a well known local eatery, called “Chick and Ruth’s, named after the original owners. It was fantastic. There is nothing like it in North Carolina that I have seen. It is not large, but in the middle of the restaurant, there is a huge American flag, and every morning at 8:30 a.m., everyone who is there stands and recites the Pledge of Allegiance.

 

                If you have the chance to go to the historic part of Annapolis…go. Tour the shops, the capitol, have the best crab cakes anywhere and walk the grounds of the Naval Academy. You will be glad you did.