My father went to high school in a rough area of New Jersey. He was a skinny nerd and quickly became the target of a bully and his gang of followers.
In class, this bully would prick the back of my dad’s neck with a thumbtack, warning him that if he ever “squealed,” he’d get the beating of his life.
My dad believed him.
As the days passed, he just couldn’t take it anymore and he decided, even if it meant getting the beating of his life, to confront this bully. He went after him in a hallway where there would be lots of witnesses, deliberately acting as crazy as he could, and paid for his recklessness with more bruises than he could count. But after that, the bully left him alone, in search of easier prey.
When I was in the 3rd grade, a girl named Ingrid used to steal our lunch money in the Girls’ bathroom. One day, my best friend refused to give it to her and this girl, who’d been left back two times and was therefore much bigger than your average third grader, slammed my friend’s face into a wall of lockers, giving her a bloody nose. I jumped on Ingrid to stop her from hurting my friend further and that’s when the teacher came in. We all got suspended and Ingrid continued to steal lunch money for the rest of that year. She went on to be a terror in middle school.
I know that bullies are usually insecure, self-loathing individuals. Once upon a time, they were simply the biggest and meanest, but in today’s schools they are harder to spot. They use text messages and emails to wound their peers, deliberately trying to ruin another student’s life. Even in the adult world, we face bullies. We’ve seen them at work, at sporting events, and on the highways.
In my recent release, A Deadly Cliché, I write about how bullying can mutate the darkness inside a person, drawing forth ugly responses and a desire for revenge. Wouldn’t it be something if our every day bullies had been put in their place from those first days at elementary school and not allowed to grow into monsters?
Do you have any experience with bullying?
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She also blogs every Thursday with The Cozy Chicks.
I can honestly say that I really didn't have too much trouble with bullies growing up, but I've stood at 5'9" since I was 12 so I wouldn't have been an easy mark. I have no patience for bullies and will wallow right into a fracas when I spot any of that sort of behavior. We just had Rachel's Challenge at school and from all that I've heard the response was very good and from some surprising students. Hiopefully it will help.
ReplyDeleteOnly experience I can remember was at a family picnic where one of the boys tried to bully some of the smaller girls. I was about his size & wouldn't take that kind of crap. He jumped me, tried to bend me back over a hollowed-out log planter. I twisted, fell to the ground w/him on top of me, sitting on my chest. I couldn't hit him (he had my hands), but I managed to get my right leg up and around. (Wish I was that flexible now.) I had on those wonderful old, HEAVY saddle shoes and I managed to kick him in the left eye with the heel of my shoe! He fell back, the grownups came charging, and I was helped up, brushed off, and his eye swelled like a blimp. The other boys immediately started making fun of him, the adults chewed him out royally, and -- I think -- that pretty much ended his bullying career. As for me, I cried and swore that was the end of my fighting career. Although that happened over 50 years ago, It still raises intense emotions in me. I hate to see it happening on such major scales nowadays. Emotional bullying can be as or more devastating than physical abuse. Thank heaven for programs like Rachel's Challenge.
ReplyDeleteI have two sons. One is a giant teddy bear but the giant part kept him safe from bullies. The other was smaller and would have been an easy target. He solved his problem by making some strategic friendships. Not only did he always have a few really big guys as friends, in high school he was careful to have at least one or two friend in all of the various groups (gangs, cliques, whatever). That way there was always someone to say, "Hey, let him be. He's okay." I was grateful that he figured this out on his own because I would have been at a loss on how to protect him.
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