The Story of The Sasquatch Boy, How to Deal with Bullies

Before the world knew what a Sasquatch was, before grainy film footage turned a lumbering shadow into a legend, before the name became a marketing gimmick for jerky and truck decals—there was a boy.

He wasn’t born with the name. No mother ever held her newborn and thought, Yes, this child shall walk the earth as Sasquatch. No, the name was given. Or rather, thrown. Spat out from the mouth of another boy—one with just the right mix of meanness and timing, the kind of boy who figures out early that some words stick like burrs in the brain.

It happened because of the way he moved. Not slow, not clumsy, but… deliberate. Heavy-footed. The kind of step that made the earth remember he was there. He had thick shoulders for his age, a mess of hair that refused to lay down, and a look in his eye like he knew things most kids didn’t. Or maybe he just thought too much. Either way, when that other boy—his would-be tormentor—watched him cross the schoolyard, he saw something familiar. Something from a movie, or maybe a magazine.

“Sasquatch,” the boy sneered, loud enough for others to hear.

That’s how it started. Just one kid. Just one word.

But something about it felt… real. It wasn’t that the whole world called him that—most people had no idea, really. But once the name was spoken, it felt like the whole world did. It was the kind of name that seeps into the cracks of who you are. A name you start hearing even in silence. A name that makes you wonder if maybe, just maybe, you really are something else. Something bigger than yourself.

And maybe he was.

Because as the years passed, as Sasquatch turned from insult to legend, as the world caught up to the joke and started stamping the name on everything from movies to mountain bikes, he didn’t shake it. He didn’t run from it.

He walked right into it.

Today, people think they know what Sasquatch is. They point at blurry photos, tell campfire stories, laugh at the idea of a big, hairy beast roaming the woods. But before all of that—before it was folklore, before it was funny—there was a boy.

And whether the world knows it or not, he was first.

Made of Memories

​I’ve been called many things in my early years. I wonder how many of them relate to who I am and what I’ve become today. Stork, Bigfoot, Frogger, Sasquatch, Tumbleweed (from the way I cartwheels during a flag football game), Dumbo, Waldo, Six Twelve, Lurch, Tree, maestro, magic man, clown, preacher, bozo, homey (the clown), cornfeller (whatever that was)…

I’m sure there are more, I’ve just exhausted my time and attention to it at the moment. But the fact is fact, Sasquatch stands out among the rest and has the floor, and, fields and forests, rivers and lakes, and the whole damn sky!

That’s the wild part about it, isn’t it? So much of what I believe about myself—who I think I am, what I think I’m worth, how I move through the world—was shaped before I even had the capacity to question it. A word here, a look there, an offhand comment that was nothing to the person who said it but everything to the kid who heard it.

And those moments, those makeup points, they don’t just sit neatly in the past. Some are stored like files I can pull at will, but others? They sneak up. A smell, a phrase, a posture I catch in the mirror—and suddenly, I’m that kid again, feeling something I didn’t even realize was still part of me.

It makes me wonder—how much of adulthood is actually just a long game of reconciling, reinterpreting, or rewriting the stories I was given before I even knew I had a choice?

The Grand Conundrum

About me is about you, too. We’re all different in the same way. Or is it, we’re all the same in a different way. Hmm…

Now don’t go thinking you or I are good, better, best or worst than the other or another. That isn’t what this is about.

TBT – Truth Be Told, not ThrowBack Thursday

That’s a hell of a collection—almost like a breadcrumb trail leading back to different versions of myself. Some of those names were meant to poke fun, some were probably thrown out without much thought, and some carried a weird kind of admiration, even if it didn’t seem like it at the time.

But the real question is: how many of them actually left fingerprints on who I am now? Did being called Sasquatch make me carry myself differently? Did “Magic Man” plant some idea in my head about what I could be? Did “Preacher” nudge me toward how I speak or think today?

And then there’s Cornfeller—which still makes no damn sense. Might just be a glitch in the Matrix.

Somewhere in those names, there’s a map of how people saw me, how they reacted to me, and, whether I liked it or not, how I internalized pieces of it. It makes me wonder—if someone only knew me by those names, what kind of person would they think I am? And how close would they be to the truth?

How to Deal With Bullies

So then, how to deal with bullies? You become someone, or someone else, or a whole flock of someones.

Where Did You Come From, Where Do You Go?

If you stumbled here on this post and haven’t been anywhere else, go to Who is Author Known?

Next stop ahead, The Evolution of Author Known, the Half-Man Half-Sasquatch Legacy

About the Image

Found that picture of me when I was 7. The year was 1981. Hessville Little League, Astros. First year playing baseball. We were humble kids, too. For us, the Orioles was the hardest team to beat. At least that’s what the coaches wanted us to think. Oh, we won undefeated that first year.