When asked about her experience with bullying, co-host of CBS This Morning Gayle King shared a moment from her childhood that has stayed with her. Gayle went to school in Turkey from first to sixth grade, and had a friend named Janet who had a wooden leg. Jokingly, Gayle and her friends would tease Janet, calling her “peg leg,” but Janet never seemed to mind. One day Janet was absent from school, and her father came in and asked if he could speak to Gayle and her friends. “He got down on his knees to talk to us,” Gayle says, “and he told us, ‘I’m sure you are all really nice little girls, but you hurt my daughter’s feelings when you tease her that way, and I’m asking that you please not do that.” Gayle hadn’t seen it as bullying at the time, since Janet used to laugh along with them when they teased her. When Gayle said that to Janet’s father, he told her that Janet may laugh with them, but that she comes home every night and cries about it. “What was amazing about this man was that he got on his knees, looked at us and asked us to please not do that,” Gayle says, “and that day I promised my fourth grade self that I’d never do that to someone else.”
Gayle makes a statement at the Vanity Fair Oscar party. Her chandelier earrings pair perfectly with her couture gown.
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