-- Friday, August 6, 1999 -- ------------   2:16 p.m. Bullies truly rule the world, don't you think? Today is the eagerly awaited, in some circles, debut of the movie that will once and for all and finally Change Everything: Mystery Men. I have my little hopes up, along with many other wimps who will patiently wait in line to see the film, carefully stepping aside if somebody bigger and meaner wants to move up to the front. I hope there are some tickets available -- I mean, I hate to be a bother and all. They should declare today a special holiday, a day like Super Bowl Sunday. It should be a holiday from the boneheads, the thugs, the big guys, the baddies, the noisy ones, the threatening, fist-shaking strong arms. It could be a day in which the weird little flimsy people can go about their tasks and their dreams unimpeded, happily able to hop and skip on the sidewalk in spangles and slippers and Gilligan's hats and voile capes and nobody's going to punch you out because the bullies are all inside, up to their paws in chips watching even bigger guys than themselves beat each other silly. It's just a thought. I could be wrong. Bullies really ruin everything, you know? They can use Third Voice to scribble all over this web page, for example, and who could stop them? You saw what they did to that poor couple with all the books in Clockwork Orange. Any bully on earth could take Stephen Hawking, easy. Might always thrumps right.

Because of the bullies, the night has not been a fit place for women ever since that mysterious, imperious person in charge issued a death threat against all of us. A generic, no-expiration date, one-size-fits-all death threat, easily redeemable by any female walking at the wrong time of the night or driving in the wrong place after dark. It may be a free country for all men who were created equal, but for the rest of us women, the gates close at sundown and you'd better be inside -- or else. Because of the bullies, I've taken my manuscripts and stuff back after each excoriation and just quietly filed the shattered pieces and fragments of various novels and stories away on index cards labeled by topic and date and page number, so's not to bother anybody further. Because of bullies, I've never been able to contribute to any discussion on any public newsgroup. I tried once, I dimly remember, to say something witty on alt. urban myths, and really, I'm still scathed from the broiling and the roiling that ensued. And any heavy-breathing bully reading this with a keypad to hand will pound out in response: "Get over it," "Get a life," "RTFM," and that mellifluous classic: "ROTFLMFAO." And yet, the very thing that makes me a writer, the thing I depend on the way a plumber depends on his pipe wrench -- my sensitivity (yeow, I hate to say that. I duck my head and run after I say that word) -- yes, that very sensitivity is what makes it so hard to push my stuff across the counter for public consumption and stick around for the response. I mean, what if somebody doesn't like it? It makes it hard to get and keep a killer agent. It makes it hard to get your security back. It makes it hard, sometimes, just to get your mail from the miserable neighbor next door who gets it by mistake. The movies and the fairy tales and the self-help books always tell you that the only way to win is to screw up your courage and stand up for your royalties, your space heater, your fair share, and your place in line. But no, I humbly and quite firmly, beg to differ. The one thing you can't let them take from you, no matter how much of a pounding you get, is your right to be a wimp. Somebody has to remain polite. Somebody has to step aside. Somebody has to quietly survey the damage and graciously volunteer to clean it all up. Somebody has to give in and call it quits. The very life of the baby dangling in Solomon's gripping parable depended whole and entirely on the softness in the heart of the mother. Somebody has to pick up the pieces and catalog things and quietly reflect on all the mayhem in the middle of the night and pick up a quill or a pen or a stylus and tap out the truth. And that somebody is, more often than not, a big old stupid, useless and beaten, timid and nearly bankrupt grade-A, classless, and almost hopeless number-one wimp.

So who's going to stand up and defeat the bullies once and for all? I hope it's going to be Janeane and Ben and Hank. I really really do. I'm rooting for them. I'm not totally confident, but I am cautiously optimistic. There's power in numbers and accumulation and the quiet stockpiling of supplies and dry goods. There's still power in the printed word. And don't worry, by the way, if you don't like today's piece. It's all right. I've got a million index cards. I'll make more. Come back tomorrow and see.