There was a bully in our neighborhood when I was around 6 or 7 years old. He was a monster. He threw eggs at me as I walked to school, he broke windows, he screamed and yelled at the teacher in our classroom, and he once pulled a little girls underwear down under her dress in the middle of the playground. I hated him. We all hated him.

And his nose was constantly wet. He was known among the 7 year olds as Snot Nosed Johnny. There was always something foreign coming out of his nose. His eyes squinted when there was no sun and he was always sniffling.

He mocked a boy in our class who had what I thought was a beautiful Southern drawl. Snot Nose also hit a boy in the nose because, he as he said to him:

“You have a Jew beak.”

And he really hated me. He really, truly, deeply, methodically hated me. My hair was pulled, I lost one of my teeth after being hit in the face with his golf club, and he once threw a small bottle of red paint at my back.

He never got caught. His actions didn’t go unnoticed. But it seemed to all of us, that somehow, in some way, Snot Nose would always come back. And if you tattled, if you ratted, the punishment got worse.

And he had friends. There were guys like him that enjoyed him, that followed him, and laughed with him, and helped push the one black kid in our school down the stairs. He had good friends.

I really hated him. A lot of us did.

One time, as we were out on the playground during recess, Snot Nose cornered me with 3 of his hoodlums. They were backing me into the corner of the schoolyard out of sight of any teacher, and most every student was either too busy or too frightened to move. As they came closer to me, the three of them, Snot Nose squinting and sniffling and smiling with his fists clenched and the hot sun blazing on his freckled pale face, I turned and tried to run. They caught me:

“Why are you doing this?!” I screamed at them.

“Fags are stupid.” He said smiling.

I was pushed to the ground and stomped on like a potato pancake.

A year later, as my mother re married and she and my new step dad decided to move us all to Illinois to start a brand new life, Snot Nose was run over by a car in the middle of our quiet, little street in Marble Estates. He was killed instantly and the driver was never caught.

My mother came into my bedroom that night and sat me down and tried to prepare me for what would be my very first encounter with death.

“He’s dead sweetie. He was killed in the street. Do you understand what that means?”

“Yes.” I remember saying.

“He’s with God now.” My mom said putting her hand on my back.

I thought for a moment. I thought very hard. God was not a big presence in our lives, but we had been to church and I knew about the Bible and I liked Jesus. I thought he was a great guy with a great philosophy.

“But mom….why would God want Johnny?”

I’ll never forget the look on my mom’s face. She was truly shocked. Truly taken aback. The funny thing is, considering my life that lay ahead of us both, this was hardly the most shocking thing I would ever say to her.

“Why on earth would you say that???” she asked clutching her pearls.

“Because he was mean.”

Something hit my mom, as if she and the rest of the parents knew there was something about Snot Nose. There was something different and ugly inside that child. There was something taught by his parents that was innately wrong and needed correcting, but it was something that went unsaid and unanswered. They dealt with it. They agreed silently and silently they uniformly did nothing.

“He might have been mean, sweetie. He might have been that. But everyone’s eventually forgiven, and I’ll tell you something, as nasty as people are, there’s never a reason to keep their hate with you. If you do, you’re the only one that suffers.”

It made sense. At 8 years old, it made sense. Once in a while, my mom truly made sense. God will forgive him. Okay.

But that didn’t mean I had to pretend to be sad. I didn’t have to spew vitriol and iodine but I didn’t have to be pretend to be sad. I was not sad. Not at all.

As I got older, I realized he was just a child and children aren’t born hateful. That, they learn… You have to be carefully taught.

Jerry Falwell was a snot nosed bully who believed with every inch of his being that he was beating up the right people on the school yard. He had lots of friends that believed exactly the same thing he did and lots of people that helped in his hateful march against the Jews, the Blacks, the Gays, people with AIDS and a whole bunch of other folks who find themselves the last picked for soccer. And now he’s dead, and I’m not going to pretend to be sad. I’m not sad. I just hope my mom is right. I hope God has truly forgiven him. Funny how that’s easier to accept that when you’re 8 years old.