I grew up in small town Eastern Washington and had my own Leo, named Dana. Same same same story. Same damn story. I think she's doing ok these days.

Donny Howard. the fat, annoying kid. like any "Leo", he meant well, and in retrospect i feel a little bad. i didn't treat him badly (we even let him "tag along" during the senior trip, a bit), but i certainly didn't discourage others from treating him like shit. he's actually on my "short list" of people i want to see at my 10 year reunion this year. mostly because he's easy to beat up...i kid, i kid

(hairshirt falls out of the closet)

Y'all got off lucky. My Leo killed himself.

Our sole communication was trading my mashed potatoes for his cinnamon roll. Daily. For years.

I don't like cinnamon rolls anymore.

Even though I never question why I come here (damn if you're not the funniest of my regular bloggers), but this post is seriously excellent. I've known Leos as well (as we all probably have) and though this post would never heal their wounds, it goes a long way towards admitting that we might have done it different had we known what we know now.

Sorry Leo. Sorry Jason Rothmore. I know you were trying.

Let up on your teenage self, Skot. It is too much to expect that high schoolers, the creatures in this universe most highly devoted to fitting in with a pack, will fight their very nature and be nice to a societal loser. Like the lame wolf that the other wolves tear apart, Leo never had a chance. Very Lord of the Flies, I know -- but it's true.

The nice thing is that our standards of what is socially a winner and what a loser changes as we age; if Leo made it through high school, joined the Marines, and said goodbye to his horrendous father, he's probably doing OK, and remembers high school as a painful experience. And chances are that some of his tormentors are probably now to be classed as losers, even by Idaho standards. And those who stood by, conflicted. . . well, if they're grown up enough to feel bad about it, they're also a winner in the moral human being competition.

My Leo was also a pudgy kid. He was a recent immigrant so he did not speak a lot of English. Hell, my English wasn't that good anyway back then, but I still tried to distinguish myself from him.

The worst part is that he was actually nice to me. One time he actually clapped at me when I made a smart remark in class and I just shoot him this look of disgust.

I am still trying to make up for that to this day.

Interesting timing. I went to school friends.com a couple of days ago and saw my 'Leo's' post. He seems to be doing ok, career-wise. I was terrible to him. I felt horrible, horrible guilt.

His post seemed so forgiving. Why would anyone want to re-visit a place where they were socially ostracized and tormented? Yet there he was weilding an open invitation for those people to get back in contact.

Something in me desperately wanted to meet up with him and apologise; I just couldn't guarantee he wouldn't have a bomb strapped to his chest.

I wouldn't blame him. But I value my face.

Interesting timing. I went to school friends.com a couple of days ago and saw my 'Leo's' post. He seems to be doing ok, career-wise. I was terrible to him. I felt horrible, horrible guilt.

His post seemed so forgiving. Why would anyone want to re-visit a place where they were socially ostracized and tormented? Yet there he was weilding an open invitation for those people to get back in contact.

Something in me desperately wanted to meet up with him and apologise; I just couldn't guarantee he wouldn't have a bomb strapped to his chest.

I wouldn't blame him. But I value my face.

Ergh. Sorry. That posted twice.

I had a "Leo" too. She was "Robin." I was her defender, but I couldn't stand her. Too needy, too crazy. I went to great lengths to defend her but was horrified when that resulted in her thinking she was my best friend. That was in the 7th grade. In the 8th grade I got into a war with her because of my completely misguided attempts to enlighten her about a mistaken belief (she was wrong, but I was an idiot). My classmates congratulated me for my "victory" when she was shown to be wrong by her favorite professor. I'd engineered the humiliation of one who I'd tried to protect and no one seemed to notice. I'd become one of them. Horrifying.

It's amazing the shit that happens in high school. You're right, every school had a "Leo." Everyone who reads this will identify with it. It's a sad commentary on the state of affairs in "high school culture."

I was talking with a co-worker the other day about this subject. He was always made fun of in school, bullied, etc.. He said, "In what other social setting can you do those things? What would happen if you just walked up to someone here at work, and shoved them into the wall? Or took their things?"

But you're right, that shit happens, and you grow older and regret it. Too bad for Leo.

I think it is important to realize how screwed up we were as our younger selves. To just say "it was highschool, that happens" will let everyone off forever, not just us. I really think it has to change, that it can change. I mean, there's a part of me that says of course it won't, but we have to at least have enough belief that it can enough to TRY. To try and make a difference as parents or teachers or whatever. I do feel pretty passionate about this I guess. I was quite ostracized myself, and yet I ostracized other people whenever I felt like I was even the teeniest bit cooler than them. The whole thing is so sick.

So who fixes it?

I used to be the target of jokes, got pushed in the halls, had my stuff thrown from my locker to the floor... I feel just about as strongly as anyone that the high school culture is f*cked up. In fact, I hated high school so much I went to college 2 years early.

You can be a better parent, but what about the hundreds of other bad parents out there? Then, what about the schools that allow this stuff to happen? How do you begin to control this problem?

Just a week ago 10 people got killed at a school in Minnesota because a kid "fell through the cracks." Funny, it's never the popular jock studs who shoot up their schools.

I felt so bad when I read about Leo. Like everybody else that commented, I was aware of several Leos during high school. I look back and can honestly say I never participated in the making of a Leo, but I also did little to stop it. I myself was your basic middle of the road type, but I felt like a Leo. And almost 20 years after graduating, I have learned that many of the people I thought had everything in school felt like Leos themselves. We never really know what someone is thinking or what their self image is. And we're all a lot more alike then we think. Meg

I don't think there's any real remedy for this, by means of pedagogy in schools or on the part of parents. Pecking orders exist whether we like them or not, and as a usual thing, staking one's ground in primary or junior or high school is a daily struggle to keep yourself from losing one of your own eyes.

Kids, even the best of them, can be real shits. The best we can hope for is that they wake up in adulthood. It's clear you have.