Bullies

[Bartmanhomer]

I can't stand bullies. Especially when they harassing a weak person who can't defend themselves even when a weak person with I disability. I use to have a bully when I was very young. I was very upset and miserable. I fought the bullies for defending myself because I don't play around. I know that everybody has a bully back when everybody was young. What's your story?

[weckar]

Mine was several years younger than me, which made it particularly awkward.

[Crow]

Teach your children that if they see somebody else being bullied, step in and stop it. Too many children sit back and let it happen, secure enough in knowing they aren't the target. All it takes is one to do the right thing.

[JeenLeen]

I at least felt like I was bullied a fair bit in middle school. Looking back, it was probably just a small group of bullies, but they'd get me and my friends most days while we waited for the bus.

I just took it and didn't respond, realizing they were probably looking for fun from my response. I think the worst of it was when one threw a concrete block at my head and narrowly missed, or was whipping me with kite wire. The former coulda majorly injured me; the latter just left scratches but really hurt. But they eventually (after weeks?) got bored and left me alone, targeting others.

One of my friends fought back. He eventually earned their respect & they left him alone. But they bugged him a lot longer than me.

Sadly, I realize I probably should have told my parents or a teacher. I did tell a teacher once, when they were throwing markers at me (hurt me, no prob as I heal, but writing on my backpack was not cool) but I think they basically said, "I'm busy with bus duty. Be quiet and go play." Which reinforced me to that the teachers wouldn't help and were okay with it.

I feel kinda ambivalent about bullies. Obviously it shouldn't happen, and I'm quite sure I'd want to punch a kid if they bullied one of mine. But part of me is really anti-anti-bullying, since I think people make too much of it being a big deal, but I think that's a sort of messed up "well, it was fine for me to feel miserable and in fear and pain, so it's fine for the current kids, too". Perhaps wanting to think it doesn't matter, so as to not admit how much bullying hurt me? So I'm working on that mental issue now that I have kids.

I do think I learned a good lesson in that, if you ignore a bully, they get bored and leave you alone.

Teach your children that if they see somebody else being bullied, step in and stop it. Too many children sit back and let it happen, secure enough in knowing they aren't the target. All it takes is one to do the right thing.

I like that advice.

[Tvtyrant]

I was bullied a lot as a kid because I was weird and rather arrogant. I was also short and as I got more depressed fairly fat. The bullying did not stop until I put on a foot of height in three years in high school, and having gone from short to tall was more threatening. I took the strategy of fighting anyone who offered any form of bullying or hazing instantly, culminating in a rather vicious fight with a college kid at a party when I suddenly became popular.

Bullying is actually rather interesting. It is a biologically natural process for humans, it starts very young and usually occurs between individuals who are formally in the same hierarchical position and have to establish dominance through informal channels. If you have formal social dominance it is considered wrong to bully in most periods, but between peers it occurs in every part of society and is rarely punished.

[Conradine]

I was bullied a lot and in different ways.
Then I became angry and disillusioned. Learned martial arts, did my fair share of weight lifting, got some direct fight experience.

{Scrubbed}

[JeenLeen]

Bullying is actually rather interesting. It is a biologically natural process for humans, it starts very young and usually occurs between individuals who are formally in the same hierarchical position and have to establish dominance through informal channels. If you have formal social dominance it is considered wrong to bully in most periods, but between peers it occurs in every part of society and is rarely punished.

This reminds me of how a good friend of mine and I met.

We were both weird kids and made fun of. I think middle school. We actually were locker buddies in gym, but neither of us realized it because we both avoided using the locker; I think we both had nobody who wanted to be buddies, so we became such by default.

Anyway, some how or another, we wound up fighting each other. Not real "fight" fights, but kinda-fights. Pushing and shoving when running the mile during gym, "fights" after school where we'd make fun of each other and mess with each others' stuff, giving each other a hard time. Then, one day, I realized we were kinda alike and we called a truce, talked a bit, and realized we got along pretty well. So we became friends.

So bullying qua social dominance made a lot of sense in that we were pretty similar in the pecking order and perhaps that was some of the strife between us. Then we decided to ally to give us a better chance against the socially higher-up.

[weckar]

I think the worst of it was when one threw a concrete block at my head and narrowly missed, or was whipping me with kite wire. The former coulda majorly injured me; the latter just left scratches but really hurt.

Pretty sure a bad hit with a concrete block to the head could well kill you. It's 3 to 4 times as dense as solid oak, after all.

[Crow]

Pretty sure a bad hit with a concrete block to the head could well kill you. It's 3 to 4 times as dense as solid oak, after all.

Correct. This could easily kill somebody.

[Bartmanhomer]

Correct. This could easily kill somebody.

I agree and not only it can instantly kill somebody but will put that person in prison.

[Rynjin]

I was in a weird spot of being the fairly short, tubby kid with glasses who also had some severe anger issues and moved schools a couple of times, so had a tendency to completely black out and go to town on people who pushed things too far, which usually didn't happen more than once.

Physical bullying was never a problem for me (I stuck a kid upside down in a trash can once after he snatched my glasses off my face), but I've always been a person who has a hard time telling when people are sincere or snide and had/have self esteem issues, so took a lot of what were, in hindsight, probably genuine compliments as disingenuous mocking. Hair especially. People used to compliment my hair a lot in high school but I thought they were kidding because I hated how curly it got when it grew long, and it hurt me a lot when girls in my class said "I like your hair!".

I guess the moral of the story is your biggest bully can be yourself? Or something.

Weirdly I think the closest I came to feeling bullied was from a substitute teacher, which is the only direct comment to me I remember vividly from that time, and the only time I've ever come close to tears in public. A guy making (wildly incorrect) assumptions about my home life based on something I didn't do for class in front of the entire class was certainly a...memorable experience, and I wish I'd been able to give him the dressing down he deserved for those remarks at the time.

This reminds me of how a good friend of mine and I met.

We were both weird kids and made fun of. I think middle school. We actually were locker buddies in gym, but neither of us realized it because we both avoided using the locker; I think we both had nobody who wanted to be buddies, so we became such by default.

Anyway, some how or another, we wound up fighting each other. Not real "fight" fights, but kinda-fights. Pushing and shoving when running the mile during gym, "fights" after school where we'd make fun of each other and mess with each others' stuff, giving each other a hard time. Then, one day, I realized we were kinda alike and we called a truce, talked a bit, and realized we got along pretty well. So we became friends.

So bullying qua social dominance made a lot of sense in that we were pretty similar in the pecking order and perhaps that was some of the strife between us. Then we decided to ally to give us a better chance against the socially higher-up.

This seems to be pretty common among dudes. I got to know my best friend after we had an argument over...something in class. He said something I really took offense to in any case, so I ate his Anatomy homework he'd mentioned earlier he'd spent 3 hours doing and still wasn't done with.

I have no idea how our relationship evolved from that, but we've been friends for a decade now.

[Phhase]

There was one kid on the bus in middle school who was an ass to me, and tried to get my friends to join in (They did not, though they tolerated him). He was a scrawny Napoleon Syndrome kinda guy. Once, he tried to get me to spit on on of the other guys, someone way nicer than he who had done nothing to deserve it. Being in no mood to do anything he said, much less that, I pretended to spit on his stuff. He didn't like that. The first fist bounced off my bones ineffectually. I caught the second in midair with ease.

He sat back down. That felt good. Looking back, there are some people I regret not hitting. I'm very tolerant (to a fault) and uncombative, but some need to be taught that such behavior is unacceptable. Who enjoy harming others, are guilty.

The guilty pay the price.

[Xania]

Sounds ridiculous since never had nobody throwing things to my head

Hm... The first ones i remember were a bunch of people much older than me, i was surrounded by them and they were taking my coat and pulling it up
Later on as i was ashamed of anything and had problems to talk they thought i was autistic or stupid (sadly too often i also gave them motives to think that) and there were some people playing nasty pranks on me, or spreading rumours about my supposed bad hodor and autism.

[Mystic Muse]

{scrub the post, scrub the quote}

...What exactly do you mean by this?

[Conradine]

I mean that I started dealing more aggressively with problems. Less afraid of getting into arguments, and if threatened I get angry instead of backing off. Sometimes I pick provocations that I could otherwise ignore and I know that's not very smart from me.

[Rukelnikov]

In my high school there were no bullies, at least not that I remember, and I was kinda popular.

However in elementary school there was this kid in my class who was really tall, he's 6'8 now, and even back then was extremely taller than the rest, he would often "try" to be the bully but without much effect, and whenever he tried to get physical we pretty much ganged up on him and beat him...

Looking back I think we weren't the nicest kids around, we stopped seeing each other at our 20s but remain friends to this day.

[Velaryon]

Most of the bullying I experienced was verbal - I was always one of the larger guys in my class so it was pretty rare anyone would try to pick a fight with me.

That said, I do recall a couple instances, one in 6th grade an one in 7th.

Spoiler: 6th grade

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There was this obnoxious jerkwad named Mike who lived on the next street over from me. He occasionally hung out with one of my friends, and for whatever reason he seemed to take special delight in provoking me. A couple times I caught him climbing around in our bushes and trees with his friends. One time he whipped a stick at the back of my head, hitting me hard enough to draw blood, and then pretended like he didn't mean to ("I said 'think fast!'"), and probably a few other times that I don't remember. Thankfully I didn't see him very often and didn't really know anything about him other than that he was a jerk.
One day I was walking home from school by myself, carrying a cardboard box full of a diorama I was making for science class. I happened to spot him walking about half a block behind me but didn't think anything of it. He scooped up a giant chunk of snow, ran up behind me, and slam dunked it into my diorama, knocking it out of my hands and damaging it.
I told the school about it the next morning, but since it happened off school grounds they didn't do anything other than wag their finger at him. I don't even know if his parents were told about it. Maybe they were, since I don't remember any further encounters with him, but he didn't serve any detentions or anything for it.

Spoiler: 7th grade

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My school had this idiotic arrangement where half the 7th graders ate lunch with the 8th graders and the other half with the 6th graders, which resulted in all my friends having a different lunch period from me. Being the kind of kid who did not make new friends easily, during recess period I just hung out by the door waiting to go back inside. It was without question the most miserable year of my entire childhood and adolescence.

One day this kid that I didn't know at all (I think he was younger than me but I'm honestly not sure) just came up to me and started trying to pick a fight for no apparent reason. I did my best to ignore him, but verbal provocations escalated to flipping the drawstrings of my hoodie into my face, and when that didn't work he started shoving me... so I shoved back.

Naturally, the teachers paid no attention at all until things escalated into a full-blown fight, at which point they punished both of us without even bothering to try and figure out what happened. And right in front of the teacher, this other kid starts bragging to his friends (who didn't get involved but were close enough to see the whole thing) about how he "kicked this kid's ***" which wasn't even remotely true.

I learned the hard way that it was up to me, not the teachers or principal, to put a stop to this kind of thing. I'm just glad I was a bigger kid or I probably would have had it a lot worse.

I certainly hope schools come down harder on this kind of thing than they used to.