Was I Overreacting?
When I was in 6th grade, there was an older janitor that was really nice. He reminded me of my Grandpa that I really missed since I lived in a different state from him so I hung around him a lot. I used to help him clean up the cafeteria and talked to him every day. One day, I was wearing my favorite sandals and one of them broke. It was during a break period and I was in tears since they were a gift from my Grammy. So I went to see if Mr. K was able to fix it, at least long enough to get me through the rest of the day. He wasn't able to fix it, but one of the other janitors thought he might be able to. So he took my sandal to a work bench and sat down to fiddle with it with his back to the room. I was still pretty sad then and wasn't really paying attention. I still don't know if he picked me up or if he had me get on myself, but I ended up sitting on his lap. Then, I thought he was trying to distract me by pretending he was going to bite me and growling at me. At first, I didn't think anything was wrong. I giggled and pretended to squirm away. Then he started to pretend to bite at my chest. That's when I started to get scared. I had looked over at the other janitor in the room, but he wasn't paying attention to us, just fiddling with my shoe. I didn't know what to do. Mr. K just kept going, though. I don't know why, but for some reason I just can't remember. Part of my brain says that he did end up nipping me on the chest while the other half keeps saying that he didn't. Anyways, the other janitor had fixed my shoe, so I went right back to class. The next day, Mr. K pulled me aside and said he was so sorry. That he had grandkids my age, too. All I could think of was "Then why did you do it?" but I just smiled at him and said it was ok. Was that sexual abuse? Harassment? Or was I just Overreacting?
Achieve your health goals from period to parenting.