Boy Gets Bullied For Wearing Same Clothes To School So Students Decide To Help
School is supposed to be fun, exciting and a place of learning, but sadly, in today’s world, it’s mostly about brand, worth, and swag. Finding positive qualities in everyone is just a statement on paper these days, and while everyone deserves a chance, many don’t get the opportunity to go beyond their appearance. Instead of learning from each other, people point fingers and find faults in others, and what happens when their children see them belittling others? Oftentimes they learn that it’s okay to belittle others, it’s okay to point fingers, it’s okay to be a bully. This story is about a young boy living in Memphis, who was bullied for wearing the same clothes to school.
For the first three weeks, freshman Michael Todd wore the same pair of black pants and blue, teal, and gray shirt to Martin Luther King Jr. College Preparatory High School. When you wear the same clothes over and over again, you’re bound to get noticed, and that’s exactly what happened to Todd, who quickly became a target for bullies. No matter how much he avoided being the center of negative attention, there was little he could do. Todd wasn’t wearing the same clothes every day because he wanted to, but it was because his mother couldn’t afford to buy him new clothes for school.
Among Todd’s bullies were a pair of freshman football players called Antwan Garrett and Kristopher Graham. When they realized that their taunts were slowly crushing Todd’s spirit, they decided to spark a change and came up with a brilliant way to make up for all the horrible things they had said to him. Both Garrett and Graham decided to hunt their closets and drawers and stuffed whatever they could find in an empty bag and when they met Todd at their third-period class the next day, they asked him to meet them in the hall. Todd, who was naturally nervous about meeting them, mustered up the courage and went to meet the two boys in the hall.
Graham recalls how Todd walked into the hall with a straight face; no smiles, no greetings, just a nervous young boy in the same old clothes, expecting to be bullied. This time, instead of taunting him, the two boys smiled at him, apologized for their behavior and their taunts, and handed him a bulky bag, leaving Todd utterly shocked. Inside the bag, Todd found some clean shirts and shorts as well as a new pair of New Balance sneakers, all for him to keep! The young boy was blown away by their act of kindness, and do you know the best part? Apart from getting a new wardrobe, Todd made new friends, Garrett and Graham!
Todd, who was bullied his entire life, who always sat alone at lunch, who never had friends to cheer him up, now smiles when he thinks about the day he went to meet two boys in the hall. To him, that was the best day of his life!
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