Fat-Shaming in Fifth Grade

Content Warning: discussion of fat shaming, ableism

Talking about the mistreatment I endured at my school growing up is a large endeavor. It seems there was not a single area of my early education that was not impacted by ableism or other mistreatment.

One such incident happened when I was in fifth grade.

I am 11 years old, and I am getting on the bus to go home from school. It’s around 3 PM. School has just let out and I am ready to get home to enjoy the rest of my day!

Nothing particularly bad happened during the school day – the weather was decent for Ohio, and I had no homework. It was a relatively good school day, so I was ill prepared for the events that were about to unfold.

At the time, I had just received my first scooter in the summer prior, but my mother would not let me use it in school. She wanted to keep me on my feet and mobile despite me needing mobility support.

I was reaching out my hand and the bus driver was pulling me on and up the bus stairs. As I got to the top stair he looked at me and said, “you can’t ride the bus anymore! You’re too fat!”

I was so shocked because I wasn’t expecting that, but also what kind of adult just flat out looks at a kid and tells them they are too fat?

Some of the kids in the front of the bus started cracking up as they listened. The rest of the bus was so involved in their own stuff that they weren’t paying attention.

I immediately felt humiliation cover my face.

My eyes began to well with tears because at that moment I was considered a “cry baby” unable to control my emotions.

As I willed myself to stop crying I said, “what do you mean I can’t ride the bus anymore? How am I going to get home? How am I going to go to school?”

The bus driver told me that this was not his problem. This was the last time he would let me on the bus and he told me not to come back. He told me that he could no longer help me on the bus because I was simply too fat, and that I could either lose weight or figure out another way to get to school.

Humiliated, I found my seat and turned my head, crying because that was all I could manage to do.

When I got home I had to tell my family I was no longer allowed to ride the bus and that began a fight with the school. who made it clear that getting me to school was not anything that was their responsibility.

I’m pretty sure that that’s incorrect and that they were responsible for providing transportation to school, but my family either didn’t know they should fight this or didn’t care.

A photo of young Dom in a classic 80s t-shirt and shorts and Black high tops, leaning against Willie, their grandpa, who is sitting in Dom’s scooter.

When I first started riding the bus to school I was in kindergarten. Riding the bus that first year was actually quite scary, I think, for both my older brother and I.

But we were latchkey kids and had no choice but to ride the bus. Our parents were both in school when we were super young, and they worked.

My older brother was in third grade at the time I was in kindergarten, and he had previously been attending Walbridge Elementary, the elementary school in our small town. Walbridge taught students until fourth grade when all of the schools in the area combined together to go to Lake Elementary –the school we were attending that was all on one floor.

Walbridge was on multiple floors, and the school, along with my parents, made the determination that it would be too much walking and climbing for me to handle – rightfully so.  Instead, they would bus me to Lake, which was further away but eventually all of the kids in the district ended up there.

My brother was being forced to go to a new school so I did not have to be alone. He also was responsible for lifting me up each bus step, which he did from third grade until sixth grade.

When we were first riding the school bus to Lake the only kids that rode with us, after all the younger kids were dropped off at Walbridge first, were fifth and sixth graders and we were little kids. They were not very nice to my brother. That was the year my brother decided he no longer liked me.

Since my brother had moved on to junior high which meant he had to be at school much earlier than me, I had been riding the bus alone for just over a year. The solution to get me on the bus after my brother was gone was to have the bus driver grab me by the arm and help give momentum for me to swing my own feet up each step.

For a while it worked.

But then, the crotchety older bus driver, Don, decided he couldn’t help me anymore. To be fair it wasn’t his job, but the cruelty he showed me because of it should have been action directed at the school who expected him to get me on the bus without finding another accommodation.

A photo of young Dom driving a mobility scooter down a street. He is wearing a fireman helmet, jeans shorts, and a T-shirt.

The school and my mother decided that the answer would be that she would be allowed to drop me off at elementary school before she went to work. Unfortunately, my mother went to work on the other side of Toledo which meant that I had to go to school at 6 AM.

Most mornings we arrived before the janitor who opened the school. I would have to sit in our station wagon and wait for him to open up the school door.

Then, once it was open I would trudge to my classroom, take off my coat/hat/whatever and sit alone in my classroom until my teacher arrived. When my teacher arrived, I almost always offered to help them with anything – grading papers, getting things set up.

My fifth grade teacher hated me so she resented the fact that I was in the classroom early. I did not want to be there either.

My sixth grade teacher always looked at me kind of suspiciously like he thought I was maybe sneaking around and getting stuff I should not have in the classroom. The thing is I didn’t have the energy or desire to snoop on a bunch of people that thought I was a trash monster.

I mostly spent the time drawing, reading, doing homework I forgot to do, or otherwise trying to sleep. Sometimes I would turn off the light and try to take a nap until my teacher showed up. They were always surprised when I would be sitting there in the dark, but I didn’t care.

I always felt so singled out by the fact that I had to go to school so early. The school couldn’t accommodate me? My mother couldn’t let me ride my scooter, so I could ride the short bus? Why wasn’t there an option?

By the time I got in seventh grade, Lake Jr. High was too big for me to not use my scooter. I couldn’t walk around it, so I was finally able to be accommodated. Because I used my scooter I was finally able to ride the short bus, and that is what I did until I graduated.

The fact that I was singled out and told I was too fat to ride a bus had a huge impact on my self-worth. I’ve always hated my body. I’ve always struggled to love myself. Why would anyone do this to a child?

Instead of singling me out and making fun of me, I wish the bus driver had gone to the school and advocated for themselves, as this was not their responsibility either. They should have demanded the school find another solution.

For reference, I’ve also posted photos to show you how fat I actually was. That’s the other thing. This is what they consider too fat to ride a school bus…

I hope that disabled kids in similar situations don’t deal with such hatred just because they deserve to be educated like everyone else.

And it doesn’t matter how fat I am or was. I deserved to have transportation to school– END OF DISCUSSION.

A photo of young Dom in a jean jacket with their hair pulled back. They are surrounded by people at an outdoor event. Two blonde women are beside them, one is looking at Dom.