Fighting Alethea





For three years I was bullied by this woman
And now I find myself standing opposite to her in a sparring match
She's so arrogant she thinks I am still afraid of her.

On being bullied:

I went to a Christian college. It was a place with lots of rules, lots of innocent people, lots of discipline, and lots of stability. For me, it was the very place I needed to grow up. I was loud, often rude, and held most people in contempt. Come to think of it, it's rather ironic that I used past tense in that sentence. I still have those temptations. But in college, for the first time in my life, I was consistently and kindly confronted about my behaviors towards other people and made to change.

Still, nobody could say I wasn't honest, and honesty went a long way at a Christian college. During my freshman year at school, I helped hold a Bible club with Beryl Rimmer and her family. She and her father had built a puppet theater and had made a couple of very handsome, child-sized puppets. Beryl Rimmer was cheerful, an excellent amateur puppeteer, and the apple of her father's eye. Her father, Bert Rimmer, was a squat, ugly, powerfully built man who ran the school's security department and looked like he chewed on nails for breakfast. It was amazing to see him gently deal with the children in our Bible club, to see him interact with Beryl and the puppets, and to hear him talk about the Lord. Mr. Rimmer served as straight man for the puppets and never missed a cue in the dialogs that he and Beryl had rehearsed.

Eventually, Beryl suggested that I apply for a position on the college's security department. My current job in the Dining Common was hot, hard, work: the lowest pay on campus, and had a schedule that changed from week to week. Security people got better pay, had a fairly fixed schedule, and got free training in Red Cross classes. I applied, was accepted, and Beryl herself trained me.

Working Security as a woman at a Bible college in the 70's was different from the way it would be now. We worked in an atmosphere of mixed chauvenism and chivalry, and we coped with it, sometimes enjoyed it, often laughed about it, and most importantly succeeded in spite of it. The sole reason that the school employed girls on Security was that new state laws required that a woman attendant be present in the ambulance if a woman had to be transported. Also, in the event of any criminal activity on campus initiated by a woman, it was thought legally wise for a female police officer to conduct any personal searches.

Any one of us who worked for Mr. Rimmer could go and see him to freely talk about problems we were having with the job or with our peers, but Beryl could not. Mr. Rimmer was so afraid of the charge of favoritism that he overdid neglecting Beryl. She had to put up with anything that came her way.

In spite of this pressure, Beryl was an example of cheerfulness, competence, and genuine concern for the safety of the people on campus. She pioneered the role of the women on Security, and she did a good job. Women were stationed at the front office, a glass building called the "fishbowl," and we worked in partnership with a man. The woman sat on the side of the OFF ramp from school, and the man sat on the side of the ON ramp. The man was called GHW (Gate House Watch) and the woman was AGHW (Assistant Gatehouse Watch)

GHW (the guy) handled incoming traffic, manned the radio, and did most of the legal paperwork. AGHW (the girl) handled outgoing traffic (usually giving directions to visitors), the telephones, and monitored the police scanner. AGHW was expected to take over all duties in the event of an emergency, so that the GHW could go out and help the rest of the shift if needed.

A girl named Kelly had been hired the year before me. She was professional, cheerful, extremely competent, and very good at her job. Both Beryl and Kelly were two years older than me. By the time I was trained and in uniform, I was a sophomore in college, and they were seniors. After I came on, three more girls were hired in non-uniform job slots, and they were scheduled to be promoted once Beryl and Kelly graduated.

The girls on Security had a unique role: we actually made it our job requirement to learn everything that the guys did, but we seldom used our skills. We were officially told that the policy was that a girl could never be promoted beyond AGHW. It was considered unwomanly for a girl to be out on patrol or to be armed. Because of this, as guys got promoted past GHW to patrol officer or to duty officer, and new guys came on, Beryl realized that the AGHWs could actually train the new GHWs. We helped them learn the incredible and varied triplicate reports that had to be filled out in great detail for anything that occurred on campus. We taught them the procedures for everything and the schedule of locks and unlocks. By this method, we made ourselves indispensable to every shift. The girls knew the finest details of how the entire campus operated.

I was very happy with my job and must confess that sometimes I could be accused of going to college just so I could work on Security.

This idyllic life was knocked slightly askew when I met the wife of Sergeant Conner. Sergeant Conner was one of the two men who assisted Mr. Rimmer. The girls were attending a Red Cross meeting to prepare first aid stations for a local hike. Mrs. Rimmer, always kind, introduced me to Mrs. Conner, and the woman simply turned and walked away from me. I thought there must have been some mistake in my perception of her rudeness, so at the first coffee break, I went up to her and spoke to her, friendly, asking her some polite thing or other. She seemed definitely insulted and turned away without answering.

At this time in my life I had managed to alienate so many people because of my own rudeness, loudness, or obnoxiousness, that I assumed that somehow I had offended her. I tried a third time, later on, and was once again rebuffed. Really at a loss as to what I had done, I went to Mrs. Rimmer and confessed my sin. I wasn't actually sure what I had said or done, but I was sure that Mrs. Rimmer would tell me the truth and help me mend matters with the Sergeant's wife.

"Oh," Mrs. Rimmer said when I asked her. "Alethea's a little cold sometimes. It takes her a long time to warm up to you. Oh, uh--" She caught herself. "Now, don't you call her Alethea, because she's on staff. She'll want you to call her Mrs. Conner."

That was what I had called her, but I said okay.

I was very young then, and the idea of any type of enduring enmity between me and anybody was upsetting to me, especially the wife of one of my bosses. My concern must have showed on my face. So just before the meeting closed up, Mrs. Rimmer told me that even Beryl had a hard time "getting to know" this woman.

I went to Beryl to get a clearer idea of what was going on.

When I told her what had happened, Beryl just rolled her eyes. She threw a look at her father's office in the back of the fishbowl. The door was closed. She said, "He won't talk to me about it, but Kelly can tell you more. Alethea Conner was really rude to me only once, and then she found out that my dad is Bert Rimmer, so she's not so bad with me. But she's been just awful to Kelly."

The next day I asked Kelly about it. Kelly was a PE major, with bright, incredibly dark eyes, her face and figure just faintly chubby enough to remind one of a teddy bear, but a very fit and able teddy bear. She was pretty with a fresh, country girl prettiness, and was very frank and earnest in her bearing with people. I had never seen her without her confidence. To my surprise, she just wilted up as soon as I mentioned Alethea Conner.

"What did you hear?" Kelly asked. "Did she say anything about me?"

I told her what had happened at the Red Cross meeting, and when I was finished she nodded, but she didn't tell me much. There had been one episode when Mrs. Conner had come to the fishbowl to pick up her husband, and Kelly had tried to make conversation with her. The result was a fierce telling off that had left Kelly in tears by the end. I didn't get this whole story from Kelly right then but pieced it together from Kelly's abbreviated reference to it and later from a fuller account given by the department secretary and by the Duty officer who had been on shift when it happened. Apparently after that, perhaps in an episode related to the first, Mrs. Conner had come to the fishbowl to sort out the way Kelly did her work. Nobody would give me the whole story on that incident. The upshot was that Mr. Rimmer told the Conners point-blank that if Alethea Conner ever walked into the fishbowl again, her husband would be fired from Security.

I realized that I was never going to get the full story on these events, but I learned enough to know that the smart thing to do was avoid Alethea Conner. School was an authoritarian place: students obeyed faculty and staff members and treated them with deference. The system worked really well most of the time, and to be honest, I would have to say in ten years of working on that campus in one capacity or another, Alethea Conner was one of only two people I ever saw abuse that authority. But she got away with it. For a while, anyway. She stayed out of the fishbowl, but she made it her job to be unkind to the AGHWs at every other opportunity.

Kelly and Beryl graduated. I became senior AGHW, and Kelly's younger sister Rhonda, another girl Darla, and a third girl named Debbie were promoted to the uniform ranks. Rhonda had her first run-in with Alethea Conner early in her career. Like her older sister Kelly, she was so embarrassed by it that she did not talk about it much. Darla, far more down to earth, was just flabbergasted by Mrs. Conner but was not as intimidated as I had been.

Things came to a head when training camp came around. Mr. Rimmer's birthday was on the last day of SCLED training. Even the girls participated in Law Enforcement training and we were certified for fire safety and in handgun use. It was an arduous week, but it was a lot of fun, too, and it ended with a softball game for the entire department and a picnic afterward.

Rhonda got the idea that we should have our own tee-shirts made. This was back in the late 70's, when Charlie's Angels was on TV. So we decided to get pink tee- shirts for ourselves with the words "Rimmer's Angels" printed across the back. We got him a baby blue tee-shirt that said "Rimmer" across the front.

On his birthday, right before the big softball game, the four girls marched down to the field together in denim skirts (down to the knee of course) white blouses, and the tee shirts over the blouses. We sang "Happy Birthday" as we marched up to the batter's mound and presented Mr. Rimmer with his tee shirt. The men clapped for us and cheered, sang happy birthday, and Mr. Rimmer pulled the tee-shirt on over his baseball shirt. We all had our pictures taken together, and everybody thought that the gesture was a nice one, well intentioned, and sweet..

Alethea Conner went to Mr. Rimmer's boss and complained that the girls on Security had thrown themselves at Mr. Rimmer, behaved unprofessionally in wearing the tee-shirts, and been immodest in the presentation to him.

Rimmer's boss was in charge of all the ancillary services on campus, and his radio code name was "Duke," which is what we all called him and was what he answered to until he remembered that we were supposed to call him Mr. Davidson when we weren't on the radio. He was a big, informal man who demanded a lot and at times could be a little too harsh with kids who were barely 20. But overall, he was a fair man, and he did like to have his departments happy, convinced of the importance of their work, and personally loyal to their managers and to their peers.

He took one look at the photograph of us with Mr. Rimmer, and--knowing Duke--resisted the urge to boot Alethea out the door. Instead, he called Mr. Rimmer and diplomatically explained the charges of our misconduct. Again, I don't know what happened, but there was some type of showdown in Duke's office. The end result was that a shadow was cast over the tee-shirt incident, and we did not wear the tee shirts to the department Christmas party. Every one of us girls resented what Alethea had said about us, but Rimmer put his foot down with us and told us to let the matter drop.

The years went on. If we saw Alethea Conner in public, she put us down, ordered us away from herself, was rude, and watched each of us girls with severity. We knew she was ready to complain about us, justly or unjustly, if she ever got the chance. Every one of us was afraid of her.

Payback

Well, sooner or later these essays lead to the martial arts. As Paul Harvey says, "Here is the rest of the story":

I graduated and was accepted into graduate school at the college. I was also hired onto faculty for two years as a graduate assistant. The summer after I got my BS, I joined a taekwon do school. On my very first night there, who should walk in--wearing a green belt--but Alethea Conner.

I was there with my friend Karen, who had also just joined. Already at this point, in spite of being a white belt in taekwon do, I had earned my first kyue in Shotokan. But I didn't talk about it at the taekwon do school because that's rude.

My friend Karen knew about my history on Security, but I decided that since I was now on faculty at the school, I needed to behave appropriately and leave the past in the past. In the course of class, Alethea and I were put with each other as partneers, and as we worked she seemed friendly enough. As we went back and forth, I called her "Alethea." She instantly snapped right back at me, "That's Mrs. Conner to you, Jeri."

It stopped me cold. For crying out loud--I was on English faculty and this woman worked in the print shop. That normally wouldn't matter to me, but I could not believe she would try to lord something over me. But I nodded and simply didn't speak again to her.

The class dismissed, and afterwards as I was stalking to the girl's room, still mad, Alethea came up to me and said, "I hope you aren't angry about what I said, but I believe you need to respect me."

I turned on her, incredibly surprised, and said, "Respect you? I don't respect you! I've never respected you! You're nothing but a bully, and you always have been! I despise you!"

And I turned to go into the girls' room. She did say something else to me as I walked away, and I threw something back over my shoulder, but I don't remember now what was said. I think it had something to do with her telling me I needed to earn her respect, and my reply was that I couldn't care less if she respected me or not.

I was angry and humiliated, probably mostly because I'd been too stunned at Alethea's order to come right back with a retort. I went back to my apartment and called Rimmer to tell him what had happened and to ask him if I still had to call Alethea Mrs. Conner. He said no. I was still doing some part time security work, as many faculty members did over the summer when the student staff was gone, but my status was that of faculty.

I already knew what was really going to happen. Sooner or later, Alethea and I were going to spar with each other. It didn't matter that she had a green belt. It didn't matter that she probably was in better athletic shape than I was at the time. I'm six feet tall. Alethea surely tops out at five foot five or five foot six. And I'd fought--really fought--as a kid before I became a Christian. She had no idea what I could do to her if I chose. And that was my choice. My adversary of four years, whom I had never wronged but who had wronged me at every opportunity, was at my mercy. And she was so stupid she didn't even know she was at my mercy. She was so proud and arrogant and full of herself she didn't even know that it was in her best interest to make peace with me as quickly as possible.

I thought about it all through the next day, and into the evening. And on the second day I thought about it some more. And then it was time to go back to the training hall. I knew we were going to spar. Girls always got put together. I brought along my old shin pads. This was back in the days when shin pads were not made well--at least not for women. My shin pads pulled up over the foot but were too big and flopped around on my shins. One result of their loose fit was that if I smacked anything fast and light with my shin, the shin pad, even though it was made of foam, would clap loudly against my shin. It didn't hurt me. It just had very good reverb.

Alethea was there and she nodded to me, determined to keep me in my place and yet treat me with the courtesy demanded of us in the training hall. I worked with Karen that night in the partners session, but once the sparring began, I was put with Alethea. I had my shin pads on.

We bowed on command. There were several pairs sparring, and so nobody looked at us, and for a long moment, I was at a complete loss.

I still wasn't sure what to do. A hoard of Sunday School teachers stood in my mind, like some heavenly host, telling me that revenge is always wrong. I had a definite image go through my mind of Rhonda, face flushed and eyes wet, after her first episode with Alethea. I still didn't know what to do. A powerful motive urged me not to hurt her and not to humiliate her. Another powerful resentment urged me to pound her into mud, because I could.

Alethea made the decision for me. She round kicked to my chin. Enlightenment came: I could easily make it sound like I was pounding her and yet not ever really hurt her at all. I could make it so that she could never touch me, and I could frustrate the daylights out of her. The shin pads won. I knew exactly what to do.

Kicking with the shins was frowned upon at the taekwon do school, but new students needed so much correction and guidance that shin kicks were low on the list of things to prevent.

I skirted out of the way of Alethea's forward motion, picked up my right leg, and smacked the shin pad into her ribs as she went by. Clap! She was startled and came right back at me, her hands ridiculously low.

I picked up the foot heel out, lightly thrust it into the front of her hip, against the bone, and pushed. It sent her flying back but did not hurt her. Indeed, it was really a push and not a kick. She was mad by then, and she knew exactly what I was doing and why. She rushed right at me, hands down, and I lightly but loudly peppered her with the shin pads, always moving back, moving away, not hurting her, but making the shin pads clap against her. Clap, clap, clap! It sounded like I was beating the crap out of her, and I was glad. I wanted it to sound that way. Everybody in the whole room could hear it. Clap, clap clap!

Alethea was frantic, and I remained silent. But she never got a kick off, and I don't think I ever even bothered to block her. I certainly never used my hands, and I never went to her face or head because I did not want to hurt her. I just peppered her as she came in, and she kept coming. Finally, the associate instructor came up and stopped us. "Here Alethea," he said to her. "Let me show you how to fight."

It was the most telling blow against her. He meant it to be kind, but to her arrogance and superiority it must have been more crippling than the worst insult. I settled down into a stance and refrained from leering at her. In fact, I met her eye with no expression, and she knew perfectly well that no matter what he told her, or how he instructed her, the minute he stepped out of the way, I was going to do it again. But after he finished instructing her, he clapped his hands and ended the match. We moved to different partners.

After class, Alethea snatched her things and went straight out. In the girls room, Karen was practically rolling on the floor laughing. All the way back home, Karen was laughing, and I was laughing. As soon as I got in to my apartment, I called everybody I knew from Security and told them. Then I showered, put on a dress, and went up to the fishbowl to tell the people on shift about it.

I think that the most tragic part of the story is that not one person felt sorry for Alethea. I'm not condemning people for not feeling sorry for her, for certainly I did not feel sorry for her, but it is still sad. I think that I never realized how hard it is for men to see young women be bullied. This had never occurred to me because they never said anything about Alethea. Their silence had made me think that they were not aware of how afraid of her we actually were. But they were aware of it, and they did resent her.

Rimmer came up to the fishbowl himself and I told him and the shift everything that had happened. They were absolutely gleeful. Then Alethea called Rimmer on the phone and made a complaint. I had, she insisted, targeted her breasts and struck her hard, several times, in the breast. That, I insisted, was an outright lie. Yes, it was unavoidable the way she had charged in with her hands down that the shin pads had hit her chest, but not one of my kicks had been hard--just loud. I told Rimmer that if I had wanted to hurt Alethea, I would have knocked her out easily with a solid kick to the head, and she knew it. Rimmer knew it too.

He told Alethea that as far as he knew, I was participating with her in a class in which we both knew the possible consequences, and so it was not a matter for either Security or the school to handle. If Alethea and I had a problem, we would need to work it out.

Over that weekend, Alethea made the rounds with phone calls, seeking support, but at last there was none. I did sweat it a little bit, but everybody else came up with the same conclusion that Rimmer had reached. If you do taekwon do, you have to abide by the consequences of taekwon do. And it did seem obvious--after Rimmer had spoken to some of the people she contacted, that if I had wanted to hurt her, I could have hit her in the head easily. I never even tried to.

On Monday morning Sgt. Conner came up to the fishbowl. This was another consequence I had not counted on. What I did to his wife hurt him. He told me that he had not known the grudge, the hurt, and fear I had felt for his wife for the three years I was in the department as a student. I answered him with great respect and honesty: "I believe you now, but it seemed to me impossible while it was going on, that you could not know, after everything she did to Kelly, and after the complaints she made to Duke, that the girls would feel this way."

He really had no answer to that. I think he realized that most people would have been more aware of reactions to such a woman, so I wasn't being unreasonable. But I really think he was being honest with me when he said he had not realized how serious the trouble was.

I know now that I had hurt and humiliated him by bragging about what I did to his wife, and that makes me sorry if anything does. In the three years I worked with Sgt. Conner, I liked and enjoyed his leadership and management as much as I disliked his wife. And I had every confidence in him.

Rimmer was very sober at this meeting. I think he felt bad for Sgt. Conner. To myself, I wondered how such a man had gotten married to such a woman, but of course I never said it out loud.

Then Rimmer said, "Alethea wants you to meet with her."

It was a stunning declaration, and I did not expect it, and I made an instant decision. "No," I told him. He was surprised and Conner was surprised. I was suddenly surprised at how very angry I was. "For three years that woman bullied me and made me feel like she could do anything she wanted to me. And she's not sorry now; she's just caught, and she's scared. I'm not going to her. When she comes to me, apologizing for what she's done, then we'll talk. Otherwise, I have nothing to say."

Rimmer tried to say something about the benefits of compromise, but I told him, "There's no compromise with this. What she did was wrong. And now it's come back to her. You can tell her that. We aren't talking because there is no agreement to reach. She picked on Beryl, Kelly, Rhonda, Darla, and me. And I am now putting a stop to it."

That ended the meeting. Alethea was duly told all I had said. She never apologized and she never came to me to talk. The next time we were in class together to spar, I said to her, very calmly, "You will ask me to teach you how to fight, or I will fight you like I did last time."

Her mouth tightened up. We bowed on command, and I said, "Okay Alethea, we'll fight like we did last time. Get ready."

And then, stammering from her lips, came the words: "Will you--teach me--how to fight?"

I smiled at her. "Sure, Alethea," I said. "The first thing you need to know is how to keep your hands up."

It would be great to say that Alethea and I became friends after that, but it would be dishonest. She stayed long enough to get her next belt. We sparred on the test, and I went easy with her and let her throw some kicks.

I called her Alethea and she never objected again. In some odd way, I think I actually did win her respect by seeming so remorseless to her. Where three years of kindness, meekness, and obedience had failed, three days of firm resolve, determination, and the appearance of being ready to hurt her succeeded. She never earned my respect, but she has earned my pity.

I still don't know the rightness of what I did. I never hurt her, though I let her troubled mind believe that I would hurt her. After the first sparring match, I tried to go on without grinding her face into the floor. I never forced her to apologize for the years of unkindness. In fact, I never forced her to apologize for anything. I just never let her get away with continued nonsense.

These things make me say that what I did was actually the correct and necessary thing. Boasting about it and rejoicing in it afterward were surely wrong. And when I think of how the situation ended I see another wrong.

I loved the respect and the regard of Mr. Rimmer, of Beryl, of other people I worked with. Stern words from Bert Rimmer went into my heart, and the times when he did correct my behavior hurt me and yet made me love and respect him more, and spurred me to change and be better at the Christianity I professed. In effect, I had something that Alethea did not have. I am what my friends have made of me, because my friends have confronted and corrected me and encouraged me.

Now I realize that in refusing to go to Alethea, I took away from her the vital moment of truth when she might have changed forever. Because I had at last gotten her attention and respect, I could have told her my perspective on the way she had treated us girls. I could have reminded her of the responsibilities of those in authority to serve and teach, not to demand and belittle. It took my breath away that Alethea had done every wrong to us with a certain prompt audacity, and now I realize that she thought she had every right to treat us that way. There is the possibility that a lot of what she did came from ignorance and prejudice rather than outright malevolence.

I was given many moments of truth by people who were willing to bear with me, to meet with me on my terms, all so that they could advance me in my Christian profession. When I first came to college, I was loud, hard to get along with, possessive, unkind, rude, and completely blind to myself. Christian people really worked with me, including the Rimmers. Now I more fully understand why Bert Rimmer was so shocked when I declared I would not go to Alethea. He knew that I really had no right to refuse. But typical of him, after his initial appeal, he did not criticize or blame me.

Years later, I was driving to church with a friend named Judy, and we talked about the incident. Judy, several years older than I, had been a senior English faculty member when all this had happened.

"Fighting her didn't even feel good, did it?" she asked.

"It felt great," I told her with complete honesty. "It was one of the best moments of my life."

My honesty really annoyed Judy, but I felt some puzzlement over how I could feel so good about something and yet feel so bad. I think the answer is that Alethea did need to be taken down a peg, but she also deserved my time and concern once she was ready for it. Martial strength is the power to force change in people. Christian compassion is the power the change the forces in people. Now I know this, but I wish I had acted on it sooner.
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