We try to teach kids about bullying. There are laws against bullying. No name-calling weeks in schools. We urge children not to be intimidated.

But they shouldn’t look to the grown-ups for role models. Not when it comes to guns. On that matter our leaders pretty much cave before the gun lobby, one of the biggest bullies in Washington.

The supreme bully is the top gun of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, who after the Newtown Connecticut school slaughter called for more guns, rather than fewer guns. And, how about arming all the teachers?

It was such a nutcake idea that had we not all been in shock and in tears we might have laughed him back into his bunker.

But he didn’t go away. He’s still lurking, snarling and growling and saying boo. Along with his lieutenants.

Bullies don’t do it alone. Bullies need backup, in this case a gun lobby goon squad. To threaten and mock. To make people afraid. To argue others into submission. To make people lose their resolve.

In some circles it goes to the very top. Consider the five Republican members of the Senate (Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and James Inhofe) who promise to filibuster additional gun restrictions when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tries to open discussion. It doesn’t matter that the parents of the 20 first graders slaughtered in December want an open debate about guns. The bullies won’t budge.

Bullies rely on bystanders not getting involved. And there are too many bystanders in Congress, including weak-willed Democrats who first said they want to do something about gun control but now worry that the bully might “sight-in” on them.

For the bully to prevail he must create a real or perceived power imbalance. He uses coercion and intimidation to get his way. I got that from a government website designed for teachers and parents to help kids identify, prevent and deal with bullying in the schools. It’s called stopbullying.gov. Among the suggestions is to change the attitude of adults who tolerate bullying. The bully mentality needs to be challenged early or it will become accepted as normal.

Unfortunately the government has no such anti-bullying website for itself.

Bullies count on creating cowards. They make people give in even when they know something is wrong. But there is some reason for hope. There are some people who are standing up. New York, Colorado and Connecticut have enacted new gun control laws. And across the country last week more than 130 groups from Arizona to New Hampshire rallied for common sense gun legislation.

But in Washington, D.C. there’s every reason to fear the bullies will get their way.

So far, the inaction of Congress has created an environment in which “cowards can succeed,” said California congresswoman Jackie Speier who calls her colleagues “gutless” because “they know in their heart of hearts” the right thing to do. “But they are more concerned about their reelection.”

There was great resolve after we buried those first-graders and their teachers. But, so far, common sense, a sympathetic president and the pleas by parents of dead babies don’t seem enough to stand up to the NRA.

Sorry about all this, you 20 first graders. Your country, our leaders and honestly, most of us don’t seem to have the guts. You didn’t even live long enough to hear the lesson on bullying.

I was avoiding Amour, the movie. I’d seen enough previews to know the story line and it frightened me. For a while I was saying I’d sooner see a Die Hard movie than Amour. And I’d have to be dragged to one of those brutal movies. And then sit through most of it with my eyes closed and then rant about Hollywood glorifying violence.

But the story of an older couple with one in sad decline would require eyes open and there would be nothing to glorify except for the fantasy of living in a book-filled apartment in Paris.

I said, I’m not sure I’m ready to see this. My husband asked, why not? It’s about people getting old. We’re going to get old. The point is to get old, he said. I conceded.

My mother had Alzheimer’s. One of my best friends had dementia. I know those blank eyes. My sister and I vow to stash pills so we can end things before that happens to us. A friend said that when he starts to lose it his wife promises to push him off the ocean cliff. It’s a joke. Kind of.

My generation is famous for thinking we can age differently than our parents. We determinedly go to the gym, watch our salt intake, do crossword puzzles and take Spanish. We haven’t figured out a way not to die or not to get a terrible illness or be run over by a truck. But in general we think we’re maintaining better longer.

I’ve been writing about women and aging since I crossed into my 50s, nearly two decades ago. Back then the fear of aging for me and my contemporaries was not dying so much as being treated like an old person. The fear was of becoming irrelevant and discounted solely because of a birth date. And we’ve fought that well. Society likes old people so much they think we should keep working into our 70s.

But life’s realities have continued. My parents and my husband’s parents are gone. We’ve moved to the front of the line. “We are all becoming die-able,” I said after a funeral for a friend.

Right now I look at illness and infirmity in the way I approach life in earthquake country. Most days I don’t worry about the earth cracking open, but then there is a surprise jolt, a reminder that oh yes, that could happen here, too. To me, to us.

At the movie theater a woman in our row kept hissing to her companion, “This is so depressing.” Well of course, it was. It was unflinching. There was no sugar-coating. But it wasn’t unbearable.

And there it was, the final challenge, even for Baby Boomers.

We meet the couple, Anne and Georges, too late to know much about them. We know they were intellectuals, musicians and teachers and had a daughter and a swell apartment. We don’t know their politics. Or their friends. We don’t know how they met. Did they have regrets?

The 85-year-old actress Emmanuelle Riva, who plays Ann, said in an interview that doing the role exorcised her fear of death. I’m not sure the film did that for me. I know it did not exorcise my fear of losing control at life’s end. I’m still frightened of the prospect of my brain clicking off and losing my ability to be me.

But hurray for a movie that isn’t afraid to take a long, quiet, sometimes agonizing look at what we know will come to us all, in one form or another. And asks if we will manage it with grace and kindness.

My husband and I saw the movie on Valentine’s Day. We skipped dinner and ate popcorn and walking home, we stopped for ice cream. Two big scoops with hot fudge.

When their oppressors fled, the people of Mali danced, The African women wrapped themselves in bright colors, some even bared their bellies, and they got out into the street and shimmied. How sweet, freedom. It makes you want to dance.

We don’t normally count dancing as a defiant act in this country. There are no pleasure police peeking inside my window to arrest me the next time I dig out some old Brown Sugar and hop around the living room.

But dancing is a threat and a sin in some places. Mali is only the latest place where religious extremists forced women to stay inside, covered them in veils, banned all music and dance, , and brutalized those who offended the new morality laws.

Then French soldiers came in, liberated the people from al Qaida and dancing became a celebration of independence.

And so it will be on February 14, next Thursday, Valentine’s Day, when the world is invited to dance on behalf of all women and girls and defy those who would oppress them.  It’s an easy way to show our solidarity. No special training required.

In this world-wide protest no bullets will be fired. No cars set ablaze. No angry mobs. Just a world full  of people moving their hips and waving their arms.

The global event called Rise Up Dancing, is part of an organization called One Billion Rising. No surprise, the idea came from the playwright and activist Eve Ensler.  Her gutsy play The Vagina Monologues has been in production some place around the world since she wrote it in 1996. She’s not afraid of taking on those who subjugate women be they Congo rebels using rape as a weapon of war or American politicians arguing the definition of rape.  Last year when Michigan lawmakers banned a woman legislator from the House for using the word vagina in arguing an anti-abortion bill, Eve was there saying, oh, boys, grow up.

For 15 years she’s been putting together events on Valentine’s Day to both celebrate women and decry the violence against them. This year she called for an “outrageous disruptive dance action” by women and the men who love them.

With all the horrible things done to women –  the gang rape in a bus in New Delhi, the gang rape by football players in Steubenville, Ohio – you would think that we might be more moved to get together and weep.

But crying feels awful and dancing feels so good. It makes your body happy.

It takes confidence and courage to dance. Which is just the opposite of what it takes to hurt a woman. There’s no courage in attacking a woman if you’re bigger and stronger and you have a bunch of goons including the law, your tribe and your church backing you up.

Men who beat up women are all cowards.  All rapists are cowards.  So are military men who cause military women to fear them more than the enemy.

Those who would manage women with their rules, be it forcing them to wear a burqua or refusing them birth control are cowards. So too are members of Congress who run away from the Violence Against Women Act .

So we will dance against all the big dumb brutes who try to control women with their fists and their laws. We’ll dance for equality and power and strength and we’ll move our bodies just how the music tells us to, and no one else.  And maybe we’ll wear short skirts, too.

In the Bay Area there are Rise Up Dancing events popping up all over, including one in Santa Rosa at 3 p.m. at Monroe Hall and Courthouse Square at 5 p.m. Also in Petaluma, Sonoma, Mendocino and throughout San Francisco. To find an event and to let them know you’re coming, go to www.onebillionrising.org.