A friend with children in middle school called me recently and for an hour gave details of her kids being bullied on the playground and in her own difficulty in getting anybody to do anything about it.

     “I’ve been to the school at least a dozen times, but the bullying gets worse. Will you write a column about this and name names?” Well, we all know that once word gets around that Junior and Missie’s mom has complained to the principal, the bullying gets worse. The golden rule, copped from the “other” Las Vegas, apparently is, “What happens here stays here.” This column isn’t an attempt to solve bullying but merely to provide some perspectives on the words “bully,” “coward,” and “chicken,” as they apply to people we like and don’t like.
     The word “bully” (and to a certain extent, “coward”) stands alone, having few, if any, synonyms. Is there any equivalent word?
     And all of us have known our share of bullies. They’re bigger than the rest of the student body, and they strut around with a fawning retinue.
     They’re easily identifiable by their breath; they get kissing close and reek as if they’d just finished munching on carrion. And they emit a lot of spittle. “Horse,” in “Bless Me, Ultima,” is the archetypal bully, as are Jimbo and Nelson on “The Simpsons.” Now bullies seldom get physical, unless the victim is much smaller, much less likely to raise a fuss. Most people who cower in the presence of a bully do so in order to survive the toxic shock of halitosis.
     All bullies have bad breath, but the syllogism doesn’t work the other way.
     One may have halitosis and not be a bully, but it’s impossible to be a bully with Dentyne-fresh breath.
     Ironically, bullies become cowards when the person picked on produces a friend the size of the bully. Then the bully says, “Oh, I was just messing around. I was gonna return his lunch money. Honest.” The word “coward” is mysterious. Most dictionaries go only so far as to define a coward as one fearful of pain or danger.
     Most commonly, “coward” is applied to someone who refuses to fight, whether in the military, or even in a street brawl. My claim to cowardice endured for my 17 years of elementary school because I refused to take on guys twice my size who’s been insulted by a female relative who’d overdosed on westerns at the Serf.
     Two letters in this month’s “Time” refer to Charles Robert Jenkins, a U.S.
     Army sergeant who left his post in South Korea, fled — in 1965 — and joined the other side. Does his desertion constitute cowardice? Aren’t the risks in “going north” just as great for him in his new situation?
     The word “chicken” is the most complicated of the three. It most commonly gets its fuel from what the OTHER guy says.
     Let me explain:
     To call someone chicken refers to the refusal to do something stupid, such as sticking one’s finger into an outlet, downing that shot of whisky or stealing that carton of cigarettes.
     On a mundane level, my Railroad buddies would decide who was “It” in a game of hide-and-seek by having all of us put our right foot into a tight circle, toes touching, and having the Sampson of the group drop a huge rock. The first to remove his foot was “It.” In retrospect, it was just as much fun to seek as to hide.
     In 1950s Las Vegas, two young men with identical Pontiacs routinely would drag up Hwy. 104, east of the city, one driver taking the left lane, the other the right. I participated in that testosterone-crazed activity only once (not as a driver). And when my crew chief discovered a tire on his Bonneville had an ulcer the size of a tennis ball, he gave up drag racing. Of course, the owner of the car with the good tires, spurred by his companions, brooded and labeled him a chicken.
     And that’s the point. One becomes a chicken for refusing to do something that could bring only harm, and perhaps a wee bit of gloating.
     I’ve always been troubled by the action and aftermath of the Vietnam war, the war in which thousands of draft-eligible men fled to Canada and overseas to escape service.
     Around that time, a group produced bumper stickers bearing the Peace Sign and calling it “the footprint of the American chicken.” The peace symbol does have a dismaying similarity to a fowl’s footprint. But is that a fair categorization?
     “Chicken” was a game people played, especially after watching James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause.” Drivers would speed toward a cliff, and the first one to slam on the brakes or jump out was chicken. Locally, some thrill-seekers would drive their cars toward each other, with the chicken being the one who swerved — and often survived.
     So there! I’ve given my slants on “bully,” “coward” and “chicken.” And I was neither bullyish, cowardly nor chicken in doing so.