Forgive me if this is a rehashed topic. I did a search and didn't find anything.
While browsing these forums, I was reminded of the phenomena of bullying. I watched a documentary about the subject on Netflix recently, and remember that it was a flavor-of-the-month special interest topic in the recent past.
I am curious to know if any forum members would share stories about being/not being bullied.
Personally, growing up, I don't recall being subjected to anything harsh enough to be labeled bullying. I was always worried about what people thought of me, and it's not like I didn't get made fun of, but my coping strategy was to develop a sharp tongue, and I never endured any prolonged attacks.
Sometimes I wonder if I was the bully. My sophomore year of high school, I sat at a lunch table with some mean friends, including somebody who was fat. I made it a point each day to come up with a new original fat joke. Some days it was one-liners, others I would write stories or limericks. From my perspective it was just jesting among friends, but looking back at it, that kid could not have felt good.
Bullying has been called an epidemic that destroys lives, but I never really noticed it growing up.
I have been on both sides of bullying. In elementary school I was made fun of a lot (there was no physical bullying due to the fact I was half a foot taller than most of my bullies and much stronger). It eventually got pretty bad when a teacher joined in on the bullying in 6th grade. In middle school I relentlessly bullied anyone I considered to be popular due to how resentful I was about my experiences with bullying, even though most of the kids I bullied had nothing to do with all that. Eventually I grew out of it. Holding onto anger like that is not good for you, and taking it out on anyone, even those who wronged you, is never worth it.
Mildly. The only lasting effect is that, when I hear people laughing between themselves behind me, I still always automatically assume they're laughing at me. It's an instinct by now and I don't think I'll ever be rid of it, but other than that, no lasting damage of any kind.
Generally I just got called gay for my surname ("straight", heh). Once someone pulled my tie a bit but that was the closest to physical violence it ever got. I later got to hit this guy in the back of the head at point-blank range with a snowball, which I consider suitable repayment.
I was very very unpopular in elementary school mostly because of my interests. I was always into less popular things like cards, video games, movies etc and because of that I put up with a lot of segregation and other forms of bulling. When I got to highschool I started to make friends and have become fairly well liked more and more so the older I have gotten. I have always been a non-emotional person though so I was always able to just go and move onto better things when people were assholes to me.
I never got bullied in elementary school. In middle school a guy bullied me for a while, but after a few months I got real tired of his shit and ended up stabbing him with a pencil in the middle of class (not too badly, just a little bit in the shoulder, and I mostly held myself back at the last second). Anyway, we both got sent to the principal's office, and since he was a known bully he got a ton of shit for it while I got off completely. Then in high school I didn't get bullied at all because people knew I wouldn't take shit from anyone. I did get into one fight in high school, which ended with me delivering a single punch to the other guy's face (also held back so I didn't really hurt him), for which I got a Saturday detention.
In middle school I actually was the bully for another kid. I saw it as friendly dickishness at the time, but looking back at it, I was a massive asshole to him. This was back when I was super hyper in middle school and I released some energy by being an asshole to this guy. After middle school though we've actually been really good friends since, and even after we've both graduated college we still see each other and hang out fairly regularly, so I guess he really didn't get affected by it.
The first time I got bully (before primary school) was an odd one which is mainly because I somehow end up being friend with the bully by the end of it (don't know how I did it).
After that I did get bully a few more times during High School like one was the popular kid (he keep wrecking my coloured pens) but likewise we became friends.
The next however didn't and I have no idea why he had a grudge aganist me in the first place (he was the school drummer so he was pretty cool guy).
In saying so my time in High School was pretty much bullying well more like getting a different treatment just because I was one of the very few Asain in the entire school.
I was bullied quite a bit throughout school, clear on up to my senior year.
To be clear, to me "bullying" means when you are harassed/threatened/assaulted in a circumstance where the perpetrator believes/knows there will be no repercussions.
Being the 'weird' kid--the intellectual, with long hair & no interest in spectator sports made me an easy target in the semi-rural community where I lived.
I actually feel really sorry for my three primary antagonists from grade school (I'd feel sorrier for them if they hadn't worked so hard to make my life hell, but...) looking back on it...one of them was even more of a social outcast than I was, another was from an abusive home and the third one (so blindingly obvious in retrospect, though it never occurred to me at the time) was gay, and trying to divert attention from himself.
My bullies from Junior high/High school were a different story...mostly they were doing it to prove their masculinity, or for perceived gain. Them I do *not* feel sorry for.
I think that most teachers do care about bullying to some extent or other, but they are hamstrung by the regulations and constraints of the school system.
In grade 3 or something there was this kid who would always try to beat me up. He once jumped on my head from the wall bars while I was sitting at the bottom of them.
Then there was this girl during 5th and 6th grade who was huge for her age.
Every time she sat next to me or walked past me in the hallways she'd make a point of either kicking me or whipping me with these thin plastic ribbons that were really popular for braiding around that time. I used to have thin welts all over my hands when the school day ended.
If she met me alone in the halls, she would do things like push me up against a wall and threaten me.
Now you'd think I could just retaliate or tell on her or whatever, but from an elementary school kid's point of view she was genuinely to be feared. She had delinquent friends at the middle school up the street who'd she'd threaten to call over to beat me up. She liked whispering threats in my ear during class. I knew these people had already come visiting our school and pushed a girl down a stairwell, so there wasn't really much I dared to do.
My days of torment from this girl ended when her older sister ended up paralyzed from sniffing aerosol propellant.
I'm sorry for the girl who managed to do this to herself at age thirteen, but I'd be lying if I said seeing my former bully deal with the emotional trauma of a practically dead sister didn't fill me with joy.
There was also this one kid who photocopied a shitload of sheets of paper saying [jonluw] + [boy's name] with a heart around it and spread them in the school building. That's less bullying and more of an isolated incident though.
Then came middle school (age 13 to 16).
I was an awkward child, and the treatment I'd received in elementary school didn't do much to leave me socially competent and charismatic. And being into fantasy and trading card games does not, for some reason, help you become one of the cool kids. So I ended up pretty much at the bottom of the pecking order in middle school. I was of course ostracized: never invited to a party or allowed to interact with the cool kids.
This didn't bother me too much though.
I was more bothered by the people who insisted on calling me 'mustard' for no apparent reason and who would do the best to make my day shitty whenever they got the chance.
I wasn't the kind to take shit sitting down though. At least not all the time.
I remember, on one of my first days at school, punching one guy in the throat right over his collarbone with three protruding fingers. That guy never bothered me again. In fact I never saw him again now that I think about it.
There was also this one guy who was playing keep-away with my beanie, dropped it in the mud, and afterwards had the audacity to pull the "what did the hand say to the face? *slap*" joke on me. Stupid as he was, he turned around while I was still frozen with rage, and my reaction was naturally to put him in a headlock and twist. Left that little **** crying like the ***** he was.
I remember particularly well an incident where these two guys (repeat offenders in my abuse) were whipping me with a pair of long robust scarves while we were waiting for a teacher. They wouldn't quit no matter how much I asked them to or moved my chair away from them.
So I decided I'd grab one of their scarves. I managed to grab the one belonging to the chubbier and stupider kid.
Now, what would you expect his reaction to be?
He did pretty much what I expected I guess. When he realized I was holding the scarf too tightly for him to yank it out of my hand, he walked over to me and slapped me in the face. I'd learned by now that the best way to deal with agressive people was to keep your composure and act like it doesn't bother you. So I stayed in my chair and laughed at him, loudly exclaiming to the class "He slapped me! Can you believe that?"
Of course I didn't let go of the scarf.
So he slapped me again.
"And he slapped me again. What the fuck?"
Then he started kicking my shin. It was starting to hurt now, but I decided the best course of action would be to ridicule this oaf in front of his classmates. So I started counting, loudly while narrating his idiocy, the amount of times he'd slapped me and kicked me.
When I'd gotten to around 12 kicks and 14 slaps he kicked me in the head.
Well, he tried to anyways. He missed, and I think I managed to deflect it with my arm.
That was the breaking point for me. I stood up swiftly and shouted "Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to kick someone in the head? I could have been killed!" and left.
Can't remember what I spent the rest of the day doing, but I don't think it was school.
Man, as recently as a couple of years ago, I'd still fantasize about torturing these people in lots of imaginative ways whenever I felt down.
I still feel I need to punch this one kid, Raniero, in the face at some point (the very first time I met him, he punched me in the crotch). Or maybe dismember him a bit. Whatever. In any case, it feels like there's some unfinished business in my soul.
Then came upper secondary school (ages 16 to 19).
I wasn't bullied here.
In fact, I'd applied to go to a particular school where people were notoriously nice to eachother.
It was a completely new experience to me: being treated like any other person. Some girls would even flirt with me.
However, this was what made me see how shitty my life had really been before this point.
Believe it or not, I was pretty happy most of the time in middle school and elementary. So long as there wasn't someone actively bothering me at the moment, I was a pretty happy kid.
Coming to this new school and suddenly being treated like I was worth something was a completely new experience to me, and it dawned on me that I had barely evolved socially since 6th grade.
I didn't know how to talk to people normally. I didn't know how to respond appropriately to a compliment (how would I? I'd never gotten a compliment from anyone but my mom until then), and above all I had no idea how to interact with girls (looking back, the three hottest girls in my class were making it painfully obvious that they were interested in me. Man I wish I could go back and make myself do something about it).
Realizing how entirely broken middle school had left me made me plunge into depression. I hated myself for being so socially incompetent, and I hated the people who had done this to me.
Here I was being treated better than I ever had been before, and I ended up suicidal and in the end cutting myself.
In the end I came to the conclusion that I'd put off killing myself at least until I was over 20, so I'd know it wasn't just the hormones that made me do it, and because I couldn't really do such a thing to my parents.
Luckily for me, when I turned 17 alcohol let me approach the social scene like a normal person and let go of some of the inhibitions I'd gained. That let me develop my social skills a bit.
Then I found out about better things, quit alcohol, and through friendship and superior substances I learned how to enjoy life and be happy again.
I still have some problems looking people in the eye though, and my emotions (to the degree I have them. I had apathy hammered pretty deeply into me during these years) don't really show on my face, so people easily misinterpret me. It's not as bad as it used to be, but I still feel the effects. I still remember, from my second year of upper secondary, the first time I actually laughed out loud with my friends since I started there. They reacted with shock.
No, as a kid, I was a hothead. So I got into fight all the time when someone did try to. It got to the point I was fighting almost everyday and everyone wanted a piece of me. Getting into fights can be very nerve wrecking, and I got sick of it really quick.
Either than that, I was a teenager in the 90s, so I had to deal with a lot jerkwads trying to act "gangsta" around me because morons at the time thought it was cool. Name calling and being teased I've dealt with. But I never really fought again because I was done with that.
My experience was quite bad during grade school (Kindergarten to Grade 7, mostly), particularly after I unintentionally let the bullies know that I wasn't allowed to fight back. (yeah, seriously - my parents were a bit before their time with the "Go to an adult to solve all your problems." line of parenting) The bullying started in a fairly normal way - older kids picking on younger kids. I wasn't a geek or a nerd or a dick, I was just a younger kid and the older bullies would look for the weak link to pick on. That was me, and when the kids my age who would be come bullies found out that I wasn't allowed to fight back, it was pretty much open season on me.
So the bullies beat me up, I went to teachers who were still "old school" and they told me to fight back, while my parents told me that fighting for any reason was wrong. There was also a slight insinuation from my parents (inadvertent, I found out years later when all this was finally brought to the surface in ways that can only be found in family arguments) that if I got into a fight it was because I wasn't able to deal with the problem in a mature manner and it was a failure on my part, so I was very hesitant to tell anyone about being beaten up so regularly. Which only served to encourage the bullies more; I wouldn't fight back and I wouldn't tell anyone. A rather nasty, vicious cycle that went on for 4 years or so.
Then one day I decided that my parents were full of shit and when one of the bullies decided to beat me up, I bloodied his nose with a single punch - not due to skill but due to surprise; he'd always been able to get away with beating me up without me fighting back so he was woefully unprepared when I did fight back. In my situation that was all it took to stop the bullying - all the bullying, not just the physical bullying. The teasing stopped, the ostracizing stopped, kids decided I was okay to be friends with, etc. Unfortunately by that time it had been about 4 years of torment by most of these same kids, so I spent 1 year (Grade 8) being "friends" with them before we all went to high school and I stopped associating with them entirely, to the point where it wasn't until Grade 11 or so that I finally even talked to any of them in the hallways in high school.
High school was pretty good for me, comparatively anyway. I was a minor jock, a little bit of a geek, a guy in the band and not a teachers pet. Some guys did try to bully me but it never lasted more than one or two attempts before they decided I wasn't an easy target. I also made a conscious decision that I was leaving my hometown and never coming back, so I didn't bother trying to make new friends in high school; why bother making friends with people I'm only going to have to interact with for another 3 or 4 years? Not being part of any clique meant that I wasn't socially obligated to be a jerk to other cliques, so I didn't set myself up as a target that way. 2 months after graduating from high school I left town and never went back.
All in all my own experiences with bullying have taught me that when you're a boy, dealing with boys who are bullying you, physically standing up for yourself is a damn good thing to do. Whenever I hear people try to deal with bullying by "talking" about it, I flash back to the four years I spent in grade school being beaten up, and how that all stopped, literally, with a single punch. How much better would my ENTIRE life be now if I had thrown that punch in Grade 3 instead of Grade 7?
I was bullied both verbally and physically throughout middle school. I was a pretty outgoing kid in elementary school but I guess the first week of middle school is when the "social hierarchy" gets decided and one of the popular kids didn't like me. So thus the others in my class fell in line with that. For the most part it was just verbal bullying day in and day out but there were a few kids who took to bullying me physically, even going so far as to slam my locker door against my head.
There were a few times where I snapped and physically retaliated but I'm a small person, I didn't even reach five feet tall at the time. So it usually didn't go well on my part.
I won't go through the whole sordid tale but I ended up being diagnosed with Clinical Depression and a few anxiety disorders including Social Phobia. I had absolutely no idea how to interact with people and to an extent I still don't.
My saving grace, however, was probably when I entered an alternative school. These schools have a bit of a bad reputation for having "troubled kids", dropouts of different varieties, yet these are the best people I've ever met. I didn't have to worry about a repeat of middle school for saying something foolish, they treated me like a friend, etc. It was because of how they treated me over the years I was there that I was actually able to get up and give a speech at our small graduation ceremony. That was something I could only have dreamed of before since the thought of just participating in gym class had given me panic attacks before then.
I responded to verbal abuse with physical violence, so both sides at once I suppose. And I was good at it. It's pretty hard to explain to a teacher just how god damn infuriating the person was when they're the one crawling to the sick bay, and all I got in return was "sticks and stones", "just walk away", "take a deep breath". As if that's the best attitude for a school to have. For some reason in highschool even the people I didn't get along with didn't antagonise me. Maybe it has something to do with having a bit of sense.
Although I will say, I had a right dick of a friend in my very early years who would make up things about other people to get me involved. But after that, I don't do anything to people I don't think they deserve.
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