Everyone was laughing—except Mike*. The second-grader was surrounded by a group of classmates. They stood outside their school in Beaumont, California. Tears streamed down his face.
The kids were taunting Mike. He had brought a Barbie doll to school for show-and-tell. Seven-year-old Cameron Thompson was the leader.
“Boys don’t play with Barbies,” Cameron recalls saying as his friends laughed.
Cameron didn’t know it then, but that day would change his life. He’s spent the past five years making sure other kids don’t get treated the way he treated Mike.
“I was a bully, and I made a mistake,” says Cameron, now 12. Now he’s trying to stop bullying in schools across the United States.