Just in time for Christmas, I looked like a freak. How festive.

I came home from town, and wife Pam made a face at me. “What’s wrong with your eye?” Nothing that I knew about till I looked in the mirror. My left eye was red where white was supposed to be. It was what your teenager would call “gross.” I looked like the guy in a horror movie who knifes everybody in the basement.

My eye doc Jim Hutchins said it was bad, but he’s seen worse. I think that was supposed to make me feel better. It was a burst blood vessel, a big one, the mother of all blood vessels. It should gradually clear up.

Count it among the parts that can go to hell when you get to this age. Keeping our parts running well is not something we think about when we’re young. When you cross over to being “vintage,” you need more maintenance and visits to the mechanic. I mean, doctor.

Since I looked gross, I had to decide whether to barricade myself in the house till my eye cleared up in 2025. Or go out into the world self-consciously. I thought of getting an eye patch. Then people would think, “Oh, something’s wrong with his eye.” Or I could walk around like this and people would think, “Oh, something’s wrong with his eye.”

It’s the tiniest of inconveniences. It doesn’t hurt. There are a thousand worse things I could have. But in that part of my brain where my ego lies, I worry people will think bad things about me. The 10-year-old hidden away inside worries I’ll get picked on.

“Neener, neener, neener! Randy’s got a red eye!”

My paranoia got me thinking about being picked on. Nowadays schools have an anti-bullying programs. We sure didn’t in the ’60s. Then, there were bullies, and there were kids who got picked on. In the middle, were the kids who kept their heads down and tried not to be noticed.

I was a “chunky” boy. Back then we called it “fat.” My getting picked on wasn’t as bad as some others. A few unpleasant memories stick in my head. I suppose those contributed to the adult I became. Adversity can strengthen us, within limits, that is. Too much adversity can cause scars. We all know people with those wounds.

I recently saw the dazzling movie “Wicked.” It’s an origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West who we all feared when we were little.

In ‘Wicked” we follow the story of the green-skinned Elpheba. Elpheba is picked on as a young girl. You can imagine if a kid with green skin showed up in your second-grade room. Elpheba courageously perseveres and grows to be strong sensitive woman.

An unlikely friendship develops between Elpheba and the fair-skinned Glinda. It is a friendship that is fictional, but so glorious that it can teach us lessons. It leads to the spectacular “Defying Gravity” number at the end of the movie. I had not seen the musical, so it was fun to experience the first time.

Of course, in real life, not every picked-on kid triumphs like Elpheba. I wrote recently how I love musicals and wish life were more like a musical. It’s not.

Anyone who’s raised kids, as we have three, knows bullying still goes on. I’m glad schools have anti-bullying programs. We have advanced in some ways in 50 years. But it’s a sad fact of humanity that as much as we hope love and kindness will win the war, they don’t win all the battles.

The snide comment, the subtle insult, the well-timed smirk are techniques employed to lift one up and put another down in front of the peer group. I wish that were only kids. Sadly, those exist in the adult world, too.

It might be inherent in socialization that we create an order. If you’ve raised animals, you know that phenomenon. If you have three roosters, it will be obvious who is top, middle, bottom of that pecking order. It is literally a pecking order.

People are animals, too. We like to think civilized ones, but we are in and of nature, too. But animals aren’t “mean.” They’re just being animals. People, on the other hand, can darn well be mean. Some kids are obviously meaner than others. But it’s true that we all take turns being the mean kid sometimes.

The kid who’s different, the kid who’s weaker, the new kid, all can be targets of bullying.

There are those around who are kind and inviting. Some people constantly lift others up, including the vulnerable. We label that being a good Christian. Every major religion encourages such goodness. Good role models are golden.

Speaking of good models, we’ve elected twice to our highest office someone who is not. He fits every definition of bully. He has called women, “fat, a dog, ugly, a b-word, having a big a-word, a birdbrain, disgusting, loser, not my type, pathetic, so f-word bad, mentally impaired, dumb, horseface, lowlife,” plus more than I have room for here. He has openly mocked disabled people and minorities. I’m glad he’s not my son.

I said before things are better in schools. And someways they are during the school day. But now we have social media. Now one can be a big jerk online 24/7.

I don’t do social media. I do read comments to articles. I like to see other’s opinions or experiences around a topic. But, oh, can people behave horribly in those. Just when we thought we understood the depths human beings can sink to, we gave them the ability to post anonymously.

Mean and obnoxious people are liberated. I cringe to think how the 14-year-old me would have felt being made fun of late at night when I was scrolling my phone in bed.

We are at that time of the year when the grace and glory of Christmas is soon followed by a new year with its chance at new beginnings. It’s a perfect time to try to do better. Maybe we can add being kinder to losing weight and exercising more. After all, making our home, our country, and our world a better place begins with each of us doing a little better.

And if I do happen to run into you, yeah, I know. My eye looks funny.

— Randy Krzmarzick farms on the home place west of Sleepy Eye, where he lives with his wife, Pam.