Bullying

 Bullying.

I was bullied as a kid.  I’m sure I bullied other kids at times too.  I can remember the bully from nearly every grade of my schooling, and the bully’s usual target.  It was something that happened and we grew out of.  Something that made you stronger, tougher and in some ways kinder.  Since I had been bullied, I didn’t often put up with other people getting bullied.  I know how it felt.  I didn’t always stand up to the bully, but I was the girl who would make sure the victim was okay.  Tried to make sure they knew they weren’t alone.  Although I do recall a moment in 9th grade when I almost wiped the floor with a particular bully who was picking on the weird kid.

But we all survived it.  We all were able to get through it and come out the other side, better people than when we went in.  So I’m extremely confused on when and how bullying got so out of control.  Where kids feel that suicide is their only option.  Where parents feel cornered into pulling their kids out of school.  Where the legal system steps in and says that throwing a can at someone is assault with a deadly weapon.

I just don’t know what happened.  People are claiming that bullying is a new phenomenon in the past 10 years; something past students never dealt with.  I think thats a load of crap.  I was in kindergarten and kids were getting bullied.  It happened when my mother was a child too.  She’s talked about it, as well as her brother.  Both of them are now in their 50s.  So bullying is nothing new.  But something changed and I just don’t understand what.

Are we really raising children who are more pathetic and weaker than before?  Who are too sensitive and just need to learn how to stand up for themselves?  Are they doing things that make them easy targets or even willing targets?  I remember the girl in 6th grade who was the usual target of bullying, and teasing.  She was a nice enough girl, but sometimes, honestly – she brought it on herself.  She would make comments under her breath to get people’s tempers going, then cry victim when we’d turn on her in frustration.  Yes.  I was one of the people who would get annoyed with her and tell her off.  But I was also one of the people who would tell others to shut up if they started picking on her for no reason.  Did she smell a little funny? Yes, but so what?  Were her clothes a little too tight sometimes?  Yes, but again so what?  I remember one afternoon she wasn’t doing anything wrong and another boy started throwing spit balls in her hair, which she didn’t notice.  Neither did the teacher.  But I did, and I went over and picked the balls out of her hair and threw them back in his face.  I nearly shoved the straw down his throat too, but by that point the teacher became aware and put a stop to it.  Anyways, was the bullying really this girl’s fault?  Was she "asking for it" so to speak?  I think that gets dangerously close to victim-blaming and thats not good.  But for some reason, that girl did often do things to provoke the other students and seemed to enjoy the attention when we all got in trouble.  Were those actions bullying, or not?  The spitballs were bullying, yes.  But other times?  I just don’t know.

What about the bully themselves?  It seems that there’s been a shift in the bullying now that I think about it.  That girl in 6th grade was the victim, but she at times could be the bully herself too.  But most of the other bullies I’ve encountered have been single people, sometimes with followers, but still only one person.  When you read about bullying nowadays, it sounds like there are groups of people with no specific leader.  Its a herd mentality.  Bullies were a lot easier to stand up to when all you needed is one person to start the resistance and suddenly, the whole class is standing with you against the bully.  But when its you against everyone else?  I can understand how thats a whole different kind of problem.

But what about this herd mentality?  If I ever said to my parents, "I did it because everyone else was" I got a long lecture about not following the crowd off the edge of a cliff.  Would you jump off a bridge if everyone else did?  Obviously not, and from my parents I learned to think for myself.  They could have cared less what everyone else was doing.  The only person I could control was me and the only choice I had to make was about myself.  Damn the rest of the world.  I had parents who taught me to speak truth, not repeat everything I heard.  I had parents who gave me self-respect and strength and courage.  I had a father who stood up against the principal when I got in trouble for trying to help someone and got tangled in a big mess.  Yes, I still went to detention, but I went there with pride knowing I had done the right thing.  Why are kids today so willing to follow their peers down these dark dismal paths?  I know how it felt to get bullied.  You’re fat, so you must be stupid.  I never understood how my weight determined my intelligence.  So I never jumped to those kinds of conclusions.  I was not that kind of bully, when I was being a bully.

In high school, I picked on the freshmen as an upperclassman.  But I made fun of their youth because they were young.  I mocked their immaturity and at times their ignorance.  You can’t understand this yet; you’re still a baby.  I refused them a part of the cool crowd activities because they hadn’t yet "paid their dues."  You can’t sit and have lunch with us; you’re a lowly freshman.  But was that being cruel?  I don’t know.  Maybe it was.  It was what the upperclassmen had done to me, except I had it a little worse since I was in an upperclassmen class; an enemy behind the lines so to speak.  I took a bit more abuse than other freshmen because I was an easy, available target.  But my intelligence was never questioned because of the color of my hair.  Or the number of freckles on my face.  My sanity was mocked when I dyed my hair blue, but not my sexuality.

I listen and read how these kids are bullying each other and I just don’t understand it and don’t tolerate it.  I didn’t tolerate it when I was in school and only a student.  Which makes me wonder?  We have the bully and the victim.  Where is everyone else?  I’m not talking about the teachers and administrators, I’m talking about the other kids.  Maybe my school was so big that everyone was able to find at least one other person to stand with them.  No one was completely alone.  The emo kids; the band geeks, the jocks, the nerds, the Mexicans, the hip-hoppers, the rappers, the preps – everyone had someone.  In a smaller school, being different might be a lot harder.  You might not have a place to go to be your own person.  You might stick out no matter what you do, and therefore become the target of the bullying.  Except…  Where are the other kids?  I wasn’t the most popular kid ever in school and I didn’t always do the most popular action.  There was a kid in my 9th grade science class who was quite possibly one of the most erratic, out of touch, annoying people I’ve ever met.  He drove every single person (including our teacher) bonkers.  But when the class bully tried to pick on him, I stood up for him.  I did it more than once.  While I found the kid annoying, I found the bully hurtful.  Most of that class groaned or rolled their eyes when I would turn around to lay into the bully yet again.  But eventually, a few other kids would tell him to knock it off too.  Where are the other kids?  Why isn’t anyone standing up for each other anymore?

While I got in trouble for following the crowd, I got it just as bad for not doing the right thing – for staying silent.  An incident in elementary school escalated to a point where a letter was sent home to every parent in the class, not just those involved.  I was not involved in any way, because I was still smarting from the punishment of following the crowd.  I thought my parents would understand that I had stayed out of it.  It wasn’t my business.  But it was almost worse!  I knew something wasn’t right and I sat by and said nothing?!  I argued that there were more kids this time, that I was just trying to stay out of the way and not be involved.  But I was still in trouble.  How would you feel if you were that person and no one tried to help you?  That has stuck with me for years.

The world is in an uproar to bring an end to bullying.  But I think to really make something end, you have to understand how it began and why it continues.  Do these kids not consider what it must feel like to be picked on like that?  Or… do they understand all to well what it feels like?  Is there someone else in their life who bullies and threatens them on a daily basis?  One of the biggest bullies and badasses in my high school career was a guy named John.  You did not want to cross him.  I was one of the few people who didn’t care and would tell him off if he got in my way.  In 11th grade, we were paired as chemistry partners.  I discovered John was a lot smarter than most people gave him credit for.  I also found out that his dad was incredibly abusive, verbally, emotionally and mentally – though rarely physically.  I didn’t give him a free pass, but once I understood what John was living with at home, I understood why he acted that way at school.  And why nothing the school administration did to him was scary compared to what his father would do.  So when he walked into class all worked up over some stupid freshman taking the last bagel in the cafeteria, I guessed he hadn’t been allowed to eat dinner or breakfast and would give him my granola bar or lunch or half of my bagel.  And then I’d smack him for beating up a freshman over a dumb bagel.  Eventually, he stopped raging at freshmen and would just ask me to split my breakfast.  I didn’t completely change him completely, because he was still pretty crazy and dangerous.  But I thought about what he must be going through.  I tried to see the world through his eyes for a moment.  Because he had these beautiful blue eyes that had pain etched into them.  But you could only see that if you could get him to drop his anger.

With the advent of Facebook, My Space, Twitter, its all too easy to never look someone in the eye.  Its all too easy to never actually face the person who you are abusing.  Its all too easy to never acknowledge what you’ve said.  Because you don’t actually say it.  You text it or type it rather speaking the words out loud.  Words become different when spoken out loud and fall onto ears.  Spoken words become personal and living and real.  Text is just scratches that symbolize the words.

I don’t know how to fix this problem.  Are students provoking the bullies?  Are parents not raising their children?  Are teachers ignoring the problem?  Are other students staying silent?  I can’t help but think its a little bit of everything.  But I also can’t help but think that this hard-nose stand against bullying of any kind will end up with students being expelled for laughing at blue hair.  I mean, blue hair is funny!  Its hair… that’s blue!  The difference between that and bullying is when the laughing is not good-natured, but cruel.  When suddenly blue hair means you are a gay stupid whore.  When suddenly people are scratching those words into your locker and your car.  When you have beer cans thrown at you while you walk home.  When parents are not putting the fear of God into their children for those actions, and other parents are doing the same to their children who did nothing about it.

I feel like all these problems with bullying are a symptom of a much larger rotting society and thats what scares me.  The depth of the cruelty of people never ceases to astound me.  And I don’t know if thats something that can be really dealt with.