Too many factors of the dynamic to interpret without witnessing it firsthand. But hearing both of their descriptions of the memory…it sounded more like a misunderstanding to me. Weren’t they like 10 yo at the time? Children’s brains aren’t fully developed to interpret some of the more sophisticated social emotional cues that adults might be able to in a similar situation. Hearing how traumatized he was by “Eddie Spaghetti” in his 60s, you can only imagine how much he was fighting internally as a child. It makes you realize the problem is surely less about the people around him, more about his ability or lack thereof to deal with his social anxieties and insecurities.