“It’s no fun picking on you Louis; you’re so guilty, it’s like throwing darts at a glob of jello, there’s no satisfying hits, just quivering, the darts just blop in and vanish.”
“It is their segnall for old Champelysied to seek the shades of his retirement and for young Chappielassies to tear a round and tease their partners lovesoftfun at Finnegan’s Wake.”
“It was bad enough being teased, but sometimes he really scared me when he’d say things like: ‘This boy can’t be a son of ours, look at that face. I’ll bet they switched babies on us in the hospital. Why don’t we take him back and swap him for the right one.’ I was only six, and I really thought I was going to get dropped off at the hospital. ”
“Phil talked openly about his current life, but he closed up when I asked him about his early years. With some gentle probing, he told me that what he remembered most vividly about his childhood was his father’s constant teasing. The jokes were always at Phil’s expense and he often felt humiliated.”
“Yes, that was the way it had all begun, the game of the hundred dresses. It all happened so suddenly and unexpectedly, with everyone falling right in, that even if you felt uncomfortable as Maddie had there wasn’t anything you could do about it.”
“Suddenly she paused and shuddered. She pictured herself in the school yard, a new target for Peggy and the girls. Peggy might ask where she got the dress she had on, and Maddie would have to say that it was one of Peggy’s old ones that Maddie’s mother had tried to disguise with new trimmings so that no one in Room 13 would recognize it.”
“And yet”—she looked into the fire—“there was something about him—perhaps because we were brought up in India among mystery and magic and legends—something that made us think that he saw things that other people could not see; sometimes we’d know he was teasing, but at other times—well, we were not so sure…”
″... she knew she’d never have the courage to speak right out to Peggy, to say, ‘Hey, Peg, let’s stop asking Wanda how many dresses she has.’ When she finished her arithmetic, she did start a note to Peggy. Suddenly she paused and shuddered. She pictured herself in the school yard, a new target for Peggy and the girls.”
“Rude Ralph would never stop teasing him. He’d be shampooed every night. Mum and Dad would find out about all the nit letters he’d thrown away.... He could of course get a tummy ache double quick and be sent home. But Nitty Nora had a horrible way of remembering whose head she hand’t checked and then combing it in front of the whole class.”
“He’s my color, but since second grade he’s been teasing me about being too black. Last year, when I thought things couldn’t get no worse, he came up with this here song.”
″‘That does it,’ said Jace. ‘I’m going to get you a dictionary for Christmas this year.’
‘Why?’ Isabelle said.
‘So you can look up ‘fun.’ I’m not sure you know what it means.‘”
“Rossamund was a boy with a girl’s name. All the other children of Madam Opera’s Estimable Marine Society for Foundling Boyd and Girls teased and tormented him almost daily because of his name.”
“He’s aw’fly handsome, Anne. And he teases the girls something terrible. He just torments our lives out.”
Diana’s voice indicated that she rather liked having her life tormented out than not.
Anne’s long red braid, held it out at arm’s length and said in a piercing whisper:
“Carrots! Carrots!”
Then Anne looked at him with a vengeance!
She did more than look. She sprang to her feet, her bright fancies fallen into cureless ruin. She flashed one indignant glance at Gilbert from eyes whose angry sparkle was swiftly quenched in equally angry tears.
“You mean, hateful boy!” she exclaimed passionately. “How dare you!”
And then—thwack! Anne had brought her slate down on Gilbert’s head and cracked it—slate not head—clear across.
Avonlea school always enjoyed a scene. This was an especially enjoyable one.
Poor Heathcliff! Hindley calls him a vagabond, and won’t let him sit with us, nor eat with us any more; and, he says, he and I must not play together, and threatens to turn him out of the house if we break his orders.
“Well, we’ll let the crybaby go home to his mother, won’t we, Huck? Poor thing—does it want to see its mother? And so it shall. You like it here, don’t you, Huck? We’ll stay, won’t we?”